Today, spent just as much time in class as I did in delicious sleep.
Bruiser said, Thought that I was going to die from rapidly consuming pears. Megan replied, That actually seems a rather pleasant way to go out.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Inside Out
Tearing back flesh and laying bare your veins and muscles. Lusting after street anatomy tattoos. A heart and a brain in the shallow, soft indentations of iliac crests and the insides of thighs. Swallow your disgust and feel your pulse.
Mother asks him, “Why don’t you ask him why he says things like that to you?” He’s not a girl, that’s why. Punch him, I suggest. Punch his lights out. He’s supposed to be my friend, he says. Looks from side-to-side shyly. He is not his disease, and I want to beat this “friend” into the ground. We can’t fight each other’s battles. Punch him, I say again softly, when he brushes past me to leave the room. It’ll be okay. Everything is going to be alright. He says, That’s just your mantra. It doesn’t mean anything.
Mother asks him, “Why don’t you ask him why he says things like that to you?” He’s not a girl, that’s why. Punch him, I suggest. Punch his lights out. He’s supposed to be my friend, he says. Looks from side-to-side shyly. He is not his disease, and I want to beat this “friend” into the ground. We can’t fight each other’s battles. Punch him, I say again softly, when he brushes past me to leave the room. It’ll be okay. Everything is going to be alright. He says, That’s just your mantra. It doesn’t mean anything.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Sunflower Lovers
I would like to hold your hand but the man behind you is staring me down. The sunshine is in your hair, and we have covered the table in crumbs. I like flowers that look intelligent, sunflowers that look like they’re eavesdropping. She says, “The best girls are always sunflower lovers.”
This is you,
And this is me.
Today in a coffeeshop, a girlcutie behind the counter told me my school was beautiful. I said I know, where do you go? She said, No...I had a lover there. The way she said lover made my tongue curl. I wanted to slide up on the counter and wrap myself around everything. I like things that break out loose:
Bruiser wrapped in furs, eating squares of foie gras and pamplemousse on spears. A heavy man keeps turning on the street and walking into her, “Oh excuse me. Oh. Excuse me.” When we all know he’s thinking, “Oh hello, you Beautiful Little Thing. Did I tell you I like Lolitas?” Take off your red print dress, and tell the maids your daddy ain’t inside. She used to be a wallflower and now she is a raver.
Unbraid your hair, we’re going to town. I’ll wrap you in saran wrap and stand you in the street with our thumbs both out and backward like we’re halfway to nowhere. The cars that stop will be beautiful and clean and full of raging young people. They will shake fists and hands and duck down, out of habit not necessity, into the backseat when the cops drive by.
They find her back in the apartment, and when they pry her fists open, they find them full of dimes.
This is you,
And this is me. 
Today in a coffeeshop, a girlcutie behind the counter told me my school was beautiful. I said I know, where do you go? She said, No...I had a lover there. The way she said lover made my tongue curl. I wanted to slide up on the counter and wrap myself around everything. I like things that break out loose:Bruiser wrapped in furs, eating squares of foie gras and pamplemousse on spears. A heavy man keeps turning on the street and walking into her, “Oh excuse me. Oh. Excuse me.” When we all know he’s thinking, “Oh hello, you Beautiful Little Thing. Did I tell you I like Lolitas?” Take off your red print dress, and tell the maids your daddy ain’t inside. She used to be a wallflower and now she is a raver.
Unbraid your hair, we’re going to town. I’ll wrap you in saran wrap and stand you in the street with our thumbs both out and backward like we’re halfway to nowhere. The cars that stop will be beautiful and clean and full of raging young people. They will shake fists and hands and duck down, out of habit not necessity, into the backseat when the cops drive by.
They find her back in the apartment, and when they pry her fists open, they find them full of dimes.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Our Clothes are Softer
Oh, Joey Comeau, I’m in love. I think you’d know what to do about that, would tell me, Sometimes our hearts don’t match our mouths. Would remind me, What ever happened to secret admirers? Are they just stalkers now? Would tell me over and over, I love writing notes to strangers. ”You have the best laugh I have ever heard.” In love with? Everything that moves. Taking oranges to the hospital, and finding lemon peel in our shoes. Zest under my skin, citrus goosebumps. Caress me down, with your Jesus revolver dreams. He never misses a shot.
In love with?
Sleeping naked, entangled with you. Primal desire. Small savory pastries. Basil and salt. Each of these? Un petit mort? Oh, give me many little deaths- it will not stop my kisses. I want to be filled to brimming with mutterings. He said I was breathtaking. Young men with glass-shatter voices, swap cigarettes and hickeys til their lips bruise.
He said I was breathtaking. I said, I don’t know you sir, and got down off the train. I have been chewing holes in my thumbs. Catching up with British Boy, whose friend’s heart just burst open. They watched it stop beating, the suffocating of a watch in cloth. No one believes. He says, Boys don’t cry. If I were there, you could cry into me. “What will the aim of future painting be? To create previously unknown sensations.” I have been perusing Giorgio de Chirico. The sun had a terrible beauty. Everyone wept.
In love with?
Things Victoria finds the Morning After. Rainbow unicorn bandages, Chanel lipstick, glitter polish. Her pockets full of tootsie rolls and vanilla extract. Many packets of cigarettes. A cigar. She says, I feel like a glitter princess; you are the Queen. The sound of a dying street light. Check out my heroin phone and your cigarette sweatshirt. Why are you in a constant state of discontent? The end of the world is not near. “Well…I have come to the realization that the things I miss most are the things I’ve never had. My dream is to fly.”
In love with?
Gardens and symbols. I was in the grocery store yesterday. Found a selection of little seed packets, and picked up a least nine before I knew what I was looking for. I would have packaged one up in brown paper for you, of course. I was thinking, it seems like years since we've spoken. This will not change anything. I was thinking, how beautiful this is. But they had no sunflowers.
In love with?
Ideas! Just the idea of you, and me, and what we will be all be ten years from now. Fifteen! Give me twenty and give me Uncanny and give me liberty or give me death. Oh, prepare your mouth. Make way, my gorgeous darling full of curls. Bonny-eyed beauty. She says, You live fast and love faster. I can’t control my eyes and ears and by some fault, my fingers are connected through intercrossing nerves directly to my heart. “Heartbreak is written all over your skin. You’re like me.” Take care, Carlotta! Your garters are showing! Oh Rose Rose Rose Rose.
For Your Step Following and Damned if I Look Back
March 23 2009.
Listening to Aimee Mann’s 31 Today. What will I do when I’m 31? I hope everything has come in together by the seams. We’re just caught up in our own solipsism, but there is no reason my life should be any different than anyone else’s. Listened to I Dreamed a Dream- the best actresses’ voices break with sadness, and I get too caught up in things that never happened, but happen every day. Landslide, sung by Fleetwood Mac, always makes me cry.
Heading towards an existential crisis. I knew it when I was rooting through my piles of unwashed clothing in my landfill, hoping to turn over two clean socks in my hands. Kept refilling the kettle and slurping down noodles in the early hours, and as I closed my books with a creak, the sun rose.
Mania last weekend in Bruiser’s room. She watched the rocking back and forth with laughter until crying, and when my mouth turned, she said, Oh! And I screeched around corners, and hugged everyone too tightly, and when Bitter Boy came, fell all over him, all too fast and too bright. Or- it’s just my reoccurring trip- Bruiser still sees moving paisley in plain carpet and brick walls, and I have bouts of yearning where I look out of Susan and see the trees and see the sky and everything is still, and it is not enough.
Rose said, Time is moving so quickly, and I spread out my fingers out, pleating the colours of her bedspread between them, and said, Oh. But it’s always moved that fast.
Dad called, asking, Who is Sylvia Plath? I sighed at him until I heard the strain in his voice, and he said, pleadingly, plaintively, her son, her son. How very fragile we are. How I wish I could have saved you.
There is something so delicate in you, that I thought we would break when our lips touched. Is it just because of age? When I was your age, I had scars of my favorite poems, spike gauges and tear drop tattoos, a easy jean zipper, a crown. Tied by my wrists down during the dark nights, tongue wet with lies, apparitions and a separation by a sheet of tissue paper from the world beneath. We all love and lose. I loved a girl and I got onstage to rend my clothes in front of hundreds for her. Forget you said anything? I only forget the truth.
I owe the world so much. On Never Let Me Go, the book that changed everything: “This extraordinary and, in the end, rather frighteningly clever novel isn’t about cloning, or being a clone, at all. It’s about why we don’t explode, why we don’t just wake up one day and go sobbing and crying down the street, kicking everything to pieces out of the raw, infuriating, completely personal sense of our lives never having been what they could have been.”
I want to gather you all up in my arms. I will rock you and read you to sleep.
Listening to Aimee Mann’s 31 Today. What will I do when I’m 31? I hope everything has come in together by the seams. We’re just caught up in our own solipsism, but there is no reason my life should be any different than anyone else’s. Listened to I Dreamed a Dream- the best actresses’ voices break with sadness, and I get too caught up in things that never happened, but happen every day. Landslide, sung by Fleetwood Mac, always makes me cry.
Heading towards an existential crisis. I knew it when I was rooting through my piles of unwashed clothing in my landfill, hoping to turn over two clean socks in my hands. Kept refilling the kettle and slurping down noodles in the early hours, and as I closed my books with a creak, the sun rose.
Mania last weekend in Bruiser’s room. She watched the rocking back and forth with laughter until crying, and when my mouth turned, she said, Oh! And I screeched around corners, and hugged everyone too tightly, and when Bitter Boy came, fell all over him, all too fast and too bright. Or- it’s just my reoccurring trip- Bruiser still sees moving paisley in plain carpet and brick walls, and I have bouts of yearning where I look out of Susan and see the trees and see the sky and everything is still, and it is not enough.
Rose said, Time is moving so quickly, and I spread out my fingers out, pleating the colours of her bedspread between them, and said, Oh. But it’s always moved that fast.
Dad called, asking, Who is Sylvia Plath? I sighed at him until I heard the strain in his voice, and he said, pleadingly, plaintively, her son, her son. How very fragile we are. How I wish I could have saved you.
There is something so delicate in you, that I thought we would break when our lips touched. Is it just because of age? When I was your age, I had scars of my favorite poems, spike gauges and tear drop tattoos, a easy jean zipper, a crown. Tied by my wrists down during the dark nights, tongue wet with lies, apparitions and a separation by a sheet of tissue paper from the world beneath. We all love and lose. I loved a girl and I got onstage to rend my clothes in front of hundreds for her. Forget you said anything? I only forget the truth.
I owe the world so much. On Never Let Me Go, the book that changed everything: “This extraordinary and, in the end, rather frighteningly clever novel isn’t about cloning, or being a clone, at all. It’s about why we don’t explode, why we don’t just wake up one day and go sobbing and crying down the street, kicking everything to pieces out of the raw, infuriating, completely personal sense of our lives never having been what they could have been.”
I want to gather you all up in my arms. I will rock you and read you to sleep.
Miss Beautiful Something
March 22 2009.
I forgot to read the Postsecrets this morning, I was in such a rush to see you.
Woke several times throughout the night, thinking- purple shirt? Black shirt? Pink skinny jeans? Blue skinny jeans? And in the end, I was so particular, flipping through my map, turning up the daft punk, ringing black rims around my eyes, pout and flicker, that I just had time to pull on my blue bandana and chucks, and holler as I fell down the porch steps.
I asked Bitter Boy if sixteen was Too Young. He said, Only if fourteen is Too Young for me.
I don’t know if you even care about Marx, you probably don’t. But I wish-wish-wish! I want someone I can think so hard with that it hurts. You seem true, your head just so dip-dizzy full of curls, shy eyes ablink. Picnicking on a tombstone. The pull (too soon?) of things inside that yearn for something greater. Thinking of Hannah Arendt and Sontag, and I’m getting great ideals confused for crushing.
Sorry if I’m forward- I resisted for hours (!) watching your fingers curl, wishing I could wrap my fingers round them. I knew when you first pit-pattered through the door, all deep eyes and teeth. I could imagine peacock feathers caught in your hair. And I had just meant to sigh twice in frustration, but the second time I kissed you instead. It was very almost an accident- my startled heart.
You opened the door for me, saying “Chivalry’s not dead,” and I’d just been flipping through books and pages looking for those lines. If I still wrote poetry, I’d write you something strong and sweet. A cup of tea, sugarlumps doused in whiskey. Too much? In my delirium of your lips, I took the wrong train. Tumbled out at a deserted dock in the dark, a boy with mussed hair and sleepy eyes pointed out the time. Time fell away at both sides.
Nietzsche (shall we steal him?) tells us, “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking”, so let’s walk these streets forever. I keep remembering ends of sentences I wanted to say, wanted to pour into your eyes. All the ‘yes’es and sing-songs got caught between my tongue as a gaze follows the definition of your eyelashes.
It's (kind of, maybe) an exquisite story of several years. Two characters passing in the street, in trains of opposite directions, clutching the same book, but one is married or one is lost or moving far away. But eventually, they hold hands in the park together, and feed birds pieces of bread out of a bag, or chuckle at badly-written newspaper headlines. And the reader finds them, and thinks, Oh! Of course. That’s why their eyes kept catching and holding all this time. (Kind of. Maybe.)
You told me in July you thought you loved me- a joke, I suppose. Also, that I must heavy dreams. I do.
Ethereal- Adj.
1. Light, airy, or tenuous.
2. Extremely delicate or refined.
3. Heavenly or celestial.
Now that I reread it, I think it’s all you. Yes, Rose, You.
I forgot to read the Postsecrets this morning, I was in such a rush to see you.
Woke several times throughout the night, thinking- purple shirt? Black shirt? Pink skinny jeans? Blue skinny jeans? And in the end, I was so particular, flipping through my map, turning up the daft punk, ringing black rims around my eyes, pout and flicker, that I just had time to pull on my blue bandana and chucks, and holler as I fell down the porch steps.
I asked Bitter Boy if sixteen was Too Young. He said, Only if fourteen is Too Young for me.
I don’t know if you even care about Marx, you probably don’t. But I wish-wish-wish! I want someone I can think so hard with that it hurts. You seem true, your head just so dip-dizzy full of curls, shy eyes ablink. Picnicking on a tombstone. The pull (too soon?) of things inside that yearn for something greater. Thinking of Hannah Arendt and Sontag, and I’m getting great ideals confused for crushing.
Sorry if I’m forward- I resisted for hours (!) watching your fingers curl, wishing I could wrap my fingers round them. I knew when you first pit-pattered through the door, all deep eyes and teeth. I could imagine peacock feathers caught in your hair. And I had just meant to sigh twice in frustration, but the second time I kissed you instead. It was very almost an accident- my startled heart.
You opened the door for me, saying “Chivalry’s not dead,” and I’d just been flipping through books and pages looking for those lines. If I still wrote poetry, I’d write you something strong and sweet. A cup of tea, sugarlumps doused in whiskey. Too much? In my delirium of your lips, I took the wrong train. Tumbled out at a deserted dock in the dark, a boy with mussed hair and sleepy eyes pointed out the time. Time fell away at both sides.
Nietzsche (shall we steal him?) tells us, “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking”, so let’s walk these streets forever. I keep remembering ends of sentences I wanted to say, wanted to pour into your eyes. All the ‘yes’es and sing-songs got caught between my tongue as a gaze follows the definition of your eyelashes.
It's (kind of, maybe) an exquisite story of several years. Two characters passing in the street, in trains of opposite directions, clutching the same book, but one is married or one is lost or moving far away. But eventually, they hold hands in the park together, and feed birds pieces of bread out of a bag, or chuckle at badly-written newspaper headlines. And the reader finds them, and thinks, Oh! Of course. That’s why their eyes kept catching and holding all this time. (Kind of. Maybe.)
You told me in July you thought you loved me- a joke, I suppose. Also, that I must heavy dreams. I do.
Ethereal- Adj.
1. Light, airy, or tenuous.
2. Extremely delicate or refined.
3. Heavenly or celestial.
Now that I reread it, I think it’s all you. Yes, Rose, You.
That's Not My Name That's Not My Name That's Not My Name
March 16 2009.
Someone with long swinging hair and dark lips and eyes gave me a large bottle and said, why not? I drank until I tasted bitter and we jangled and bangled and ripped up the floor, hands over our heads. The Friends are the cutest! We’re all bopping around, little girls on bigger boy’s shoulders. She’s swaying with a wine bottle. Since the summer ended, my lips have touched lips. I can count to 26! Shall I stop there? My little book only happens to be black.
Later, the keyboardist asked me for a light, and I snapped out a flame. The lead singer said, hey man, why not ask me? The keyboardist said, well you’re not as pretty as ---, and I glowed beside the lights in the dark.
As Bruiser lay on the ground with a boy and gazed upwards with a cigarette dangling from her pointing fingers and said, There’s my pentagon! That’s Cancer’s. No, it belongs to me.
I feel pummeled and profoundly exhausted. Overworked, overdanced, overwhelmed. I want nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep for a hundred years.
Someone with long swinging hair and dark lips and eyes gave me a large bottle and said, why not? I drank until I tasted bitter and we jangled and bangled and ripped up the floor, hands over our heads. The Friends are the cutest! We’re all bopping around, little girls on bigger boy’s shoulders. She’s swaying with a wine bottle. Since the summer ended, my lips have touched lips. I can count to 26! Shall I stop there? My little book only happens to be black.
Later, the keyboardist asked me for a light, and I snapped out a flame. The lead singer said, hey man, why not ask me? The keyboardist said, well you’re not as pretty as ---, and I glowed beside the lights in the dark.
As Bruiser lay on the ground with a boy and gazed upwards with a cigarette dangling from her pointing fingers and said, There’s my pentagon! That’s Cancer’s. No, it belongs to me.
I feel pummeled and profoundly exhausted. Overworked, overdanced, overwhelmed. I want nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep for a hundred years.
Consumed this Weekend:
March 16 2009.
- Hookah. Wine.
- Jugs of water.
- When Morgan arrived after driving up north for half the day, she brought me a cold bottle of Coca-Cola. Delight! How well I'm known.
- 88 cent pineapple bliss and lemon-lime soda. Victoria brought us bendy straws in different colours and a tie-dyed blanket to lounge on. It was The Morning After Picnic, and I wrapped my mother’s shawl around my shoulders and there were three cameras going at once, all clicks and flashes.
- I lost control at the grocery store, wandering those bright aisles with my eyes full of lust. So: a fat, creamy triangle of brie, roasted pepper & tomato bruschetta, foie gras, red pepper hummus, grapes that popped between your teeth. I bought two crusty baguettes. We spent the hours making sandwiches and packed them into the wicker basket Morgan got me.
- Cucumber sandwiches: Very Thin Pepperidge wheat sandwich bread, a thin layer of Irish butter, four slices of translucent cucumber, peeled and cut so thinly. Sprinkle of sea salt. Sliced into two triangles.
“Try the cucumber sandwiches.”
“Oh no, I don’t like cucumber.”
“That doesn’t matter. Really. Trust me.”
“Well, okay fine. Just one bite...Oh god, these are delicious."
- Ham & Cheese sandwiches: same bread. A thin layer of butter, layer of alouette garlic cheese spread, small scattering of grated orange cheddar, two pinches of chopped honey ham, smear of Colman’s mustard.
- Victoria brought Edamame and freshly baked cookies. She’d dipped her thumbs into their middles and pressed, filled them up with strawberry and raspberry jams. They melted in our mouths.
- And there were other days and nights. Two packages of Easy Mac. More sandwiches. More Coca-Cola.
- Vanilla Coolatta on a drive back from finding black skinnies and American Apparel-esque suspenders, beaters, open shirts. Some gay pride knee socks that I would wear later, pulled all the way up, in the sunshine. A hot, toasted bagel with too much cream cheese.
- Today was warm. I wore short-shorts and we studied on the south quad with grapes and smoke in our mouths.
- After the sun went down, we finished the last of the tea sandwiches. Then coffee ice-cream. Creamy, thickly churned.
- The Morning After After, I made my childhood breakfast for Bruiser, Morgan, Hannah, and the skitter boy. (I found blue and yellow eggcups and brought them home earlier this week.) I soft-boiled a full carton of eggs, and carefully tapped open each shell with the side of a teaspoon. Each egg was eaten with a couple spoonfuls of yellow Irish butter (that melted right inside), and a sprinkling of salt. With the leftover Thin bread, I made toasted soldiers dipped into yolk, and crispy bacon cooked in a spitting vat of grease. Mugs of hot Chai latte. I’ve mentioned the taste of heaven before- a ways back in entries- and it still rings true. Hannah said,” This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”
Destination Calabria
March 9 2009.
Favoloso says, "Can I just say our adventure was just like a dream? It's not the first time...Once I was with my British friend in Italy, and we were walking from the outdoor discotecas in the wee hours, in the rain. She decided she wanted some fish for her bedroom, so when we reached the gelateria, which was near my school, she started stabbing at the fountain in front of it, with her Kermit the frog umbrella, trying to get some gold fish.”
Snoozing on the porch in the sunshine. Woke in an empty room. My pockets were turned out, fishnets ripped, eyelids smudged with kohl.
Walking along the long, long stretch of red hook road, sun blazing, sticking our thumbs out to every car. Need to soak my swollen feet.
- Where did these cigarettes come from?
- You bought them.
- What? No I didn’t.
- You did. We bought them an hour ago.
- But I don’t even smoke Marlboros!
Favoloso says, “Calabria is a region in Italy which was highly underdeveloped all throughout the 20th century, but it's where all the badass head hancho mafiosos live. And it's full of rolling hills,
wheat and hay and kids on bikes and lone apple trees. So in my mind, the image of us walking along the side of the road was kinda like that. Except with big suv's, law-abiding citizens, and perfect roads. Oh well, the sun is always the same! It was Italian sun, we were kissed by it.”
Who drove us there? A man in white in a pick-up truck. …maybe that’s why you whispered your order to the waitress. I want a hamburger and fries. Yes, at 8 in the morning. Build me up. And then let’s wave down the shuttle from the middle of the street and ride all the way home.
Favoloso says, "Can I just say our adventure was just like a dream? It's not the first time...Once I was with my British friend in Italy, and we were walking from the outdoor discotecas in the wee hours, in the rain. She decided she wanted some fish for her bedroom, so when we reached the gelateria, which was near my school, she started stabbing at the fountain in front of it, with her Kermit the frog umbrella, trying to get some gold fish.”
Snoozing on the porch in the sunshine. Woke in an empty room. My pockets were turned out, fishnets ripped, eyelids smudged with kohl.
Walking along the long, long stretch of red hook road, sun blazing, sticking our thumbs out to every car. Need to soak my swollen feet.
- Where did these cigarettes come from?
- You bought them.
- What? No I didn’t.
- You did. We bought them an hour ago.
- But I don’t even smoke Marlboros!
Favoloso says, “Calabria is a region in Italy which was highly underdeveloped all throughout the 20th century, but it's where all the badass head hancho mafiosos live. And it's full of rolling hills,
wheat and hay and kids on bikes and lone apple trees. So in my mind, the image of us walking along the side of the road was kinda like that. Except with big suv's, law-abiding citizens, and perfect roads. Oh well, the sun is always the same! It was Italian sun, we were kissed by it.”
Who drove us there? A man in white in a pick-up truck. …maybe that’s why you whispered your order to the waitress. I want a hamburger and fries. Yes, at 8 in the morning. Build me up. And then let’s wave down the shuttle from the middle of the street and ride all the way home.
You're Never Fully Dressed...
March 7 2009.
Yesterday was beautiful. The best, even. Everyone in short sleeves and smiles, sitting around in warm sunlight.
For dinner, I made a big pot of pasta. Sliced and fried a large bag of mushrooms, chopped an enormous white onion. Mixed some leftover alfredo sauce, folded in handfuls of parmesan. Pesto, garlic, and plenty of ground black pepper. This is actually good, says Giampaolo. You could bottle and sell this, says Liza.
Then sing-a-longs, cigarettes, idling in a dark lot, straining to hear smog, in an empty field. Liza on her tiptoes puts her lips close to the cracks of the shed window, says, “Hello? Anyone there?”
Liza cosied up in blankets and I read her to sleep with Peter Pan. Back in my room, putting on the kettle for tea, a flow of happy first years flowed in, chattering and all squeezing onto the bed, pointing and laughing and one girl checks her watch and says, it’s almost life-bonding time.
Tell tell tell.
Yesterday was beautiful. The best, even. Everyone in short sleeves and smiles, sitting around in warm sunlight.
For dinner, I made a big pot of pasta. Sliced and fried a large bag of mushrooms, chopped an enormous white onion. Mixed some leftover alfredo sauce, folded in handfuls of parmesan. Pesto, garlic, and plenty of ground black pepper. This is actually good, says Giampaolo. You could bottle and sell this, says Liza.
Then sing-a-longs, cigarettes, idling in a dark lot, straining to hear smog, in an empty field. Liza on her tiptoes puts her lips close to the cracks of the shed window, says, “Hello? Anyone there?”
Liza cosied up in blankets and I read her to sleep with Peter Pan. Back in my room, putting on the kettle for tea, a flow of happy first years flowed in, chattering and all squeezing onto the bed, pointing and laughing and one girl checks her watch and says, it’s almost life-bonding time.
Tell tell tell.
Lady, Be Good
March 2 2009.
“All my being is in this single moment…more is impossible.”
-No man is a hero to his valet.
-Yes, that’s true, but not because the man is NOT a hero, but because the valet is a valet. He takes off the hero’s boots, assists him to bed, knows that he prefers champagne…
Gallant (of you). I do not believe in the intentionality of history, get it away. This entire book is excessive. At best, it is bullshit. A lost revolution, entrenched. Why file the rosaries away? Blood feud? Give me here this punitive form of primitive justice. You cannot be 50% guilty.
Future: heart and brain tattoos on my forearms, blood on my back. No lie can last forever!
When in fact, in love with the other in the room for the entire time. The sadness of waste! And eternity yawns before us. Finding that possibility of breaking is incredibly fragile. This elusiveness of history- my history and your history and our history and the music I can hear that you deny. Again and again and again. This is an out-and-out love poem to “the people.” He is loving them to immortality, and “that was a very long answer to a question that wasn’t a question.”
Voltaire, what were you thinking? “Believe what I believe, and what you cannot believe, or you will die.”
“All we need to do is hang a few aristocrats from the lampposts.” Well? And everything will be well. I need to be kissed in public, I need someone to kiss me in public. I want to pull your hair. Will grape juice give you purple mouth? Can tell who loves whom by the collection of wine-swollen lips. Ducky has noticed me looking at his mouth, the jut of his upper lip, the dark lipstick-like line below. No, I do not want him in bed, but yes, I want to put my fingers in between his lips.
Blender: Why do you reject my love?
Bruiser: I’m trying to learn.
The professor says, you have to have a philosophy of why people do things. I say no no no no no. the people are poor and hungry, but all they’re fed is endless revolutionary rhetoric, yet no more bread. Les Sans-Culottes with that vixen-esque quality he claims to see in the swing of my hips, the turn of my head. When you feel like you have right on your side, you can do some horrific things. God is a truth and His world is a truth. What’s activating history? NOTHING. The world, however, never stands still.
She would be that little maid condemned for stealing a handkerchief. Her death would rip apart the rite of the beautiful execution. The Supreme Court ruled our Constitution not a suicide pact.
So, here: You’re 21 years old. You join a revolutionary conspiracy group, you do something that could have you rot in jail, EVERYTHING is staked on this, this action, this moment--- and nothing happens. The peasants do not become politicized. It was all for nothing. And This! Rwanda: most efficient massacre. 1 million people killed in 1 hundred days. One by one by one by one.
My pre-foreclosure department nicknamed themselves “The Wardens of Death Row.”
Hitchens: There is no such thing as an absolute. Argue against them.
Fish: We all have our absolutes, which we can’t challenge.
You don’t think immediately about how the world feels (but I do!). Do you know Sosia? There are seven or eight people who look just like you in this world. And if you make me a mix CD, part of me will almost definitely fall for you. I like it best when I can hear you echoed in the tracks. You’ve given me some part of you, every time. It’s like, oh! Here I am!
I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. You know it will be alright.
“I am all sensation; I connect with the world around me by feeling alone.”
“All my being is in this single moment…more is impossible.”
-No man is a hero to his valet.
-Yes, that’s true, but not because the man is NOT a hero, but because the valet is a valet. He takes off the hero’s boots, assists him to bed, knows that he prefers champagne…
Gallant (of you). I do not believe in the intentionality of history, get it away. This entire book is excessive. At best, it is bullshit. A lost revolution, entrenched. Why file the rosaries away? Blood feud? Give me here this punitive form of primitive justice. You cannot be 50% guilty.
Future: heart and brain tattoos on my forearms, blood on my back. No lie can last forever!
When in fact, in love with the other in the room for the entire time. The sadness of waste! And eternity yawns before us. Finding that possibility of breaking is incredibly fragile. This elusiveness of history- my history and your history and our history and the music I can hear that you deny. Again and again and again. This is an out-and-out love poem to “the people.” He is loving them to immortality, and “that was a very long answer to a question that wasn’t a question.”
Voltaire, what were you thinking? “Believe what I believe, and what you cannot believe, or you will die.”
“All we need to do is hang a few aristocrats from the lampposts.” Well? And everything will be well. I need to be kissed in public, I need someone to kiss me in public. I want to pull your hair. Will grape juice give you purple mouth? Can tell who loves whom by the collection of wine-swollen lips. Ducky has noticed me looking at his mouth, the jut of his upper lip, the dark lipstick-like line below. No, I do not want him in bed, but yes, I want to put my fingers in between his lips.
Blender: Why do you reject my love?
Bruiser: I’m trying to learn.
The professor says, you have to have a philosophy of why people do things. I say no no no no no. the people are poor and hungry, but all they’re fed is endless revolutionary rhetoric, yet no more bread. Les Sans-Culottes with that vixen-esque quality he claims to see in the swing of my hips, the turn of my head. When you feel like you have right on your side, you can do some horrific things. God is a truth and His world is a truth. What’s activating history? NOTHING. The world, however, never stands still.
She would be that little maid condemned for stealing a handkerchief. Her death would rip apart the rite of the beautiful execution. The Supreme Court ruled our Constitution not a suicide pact.
So, here: You’re 21 years old. You join a revolutionary conspiracy group, you do something that could have you rot in jail, EVERYTHING is staked on this, this action, this moment--- and nothing happens. The peasants do not become politicized. It was all for nothing. And This! Rwanda: most efficient massacre. 1 million people killed in 1 hundred days. One by one by one by one.
My pre-foreclosure department nicknamed themselves “The Wardens of Death Row.”
Hitchens: There is no such thing as an absolute. Argue against them.
Fish: We all have our absolutes, which we can’t challenge.
You don’t think immediately about how the world feels (but I do!). Do you know Sosia? There are seven or eight people who look just like you in this world. And if you make me a mix CD, part of me will almost definitely fall for you. I like it best when I can hear you echoed in the tracks. You’ve given me some part of you, every time. It’s like, oh! Here I am!
I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. You know it will be alright.
“I am all sensation; I connect with the world around me by feeling alone.”
Sunday Sulking
March 2 2009.
Wednesday and Thursday, I laughed myself to sleep. When I woke up, my bed still smelled like boy. Beautiful, colossal, broad. Trains to the city going in and out. Can hipsters love? This is Sunday sulking, eyes glued to the screen- this cute weirdo (oh, Julia Nunes, give me your heart!) strumming a ukulele, and I’m paging through pictures of kittens in cups.
The weekend: Raining all the way to Poughkeepsie. BoyAdriel was belligerent, shouting on the shuttle until Bruiser’s palm smacked across his face. Dancing in strange small rooms full of dark, lips, glowing lights and beats. Holding hands, Douce stealing packs, and I can’t light anything in all this wind. Hickeys and number 50 in my black book. Came back to the crackhouse with chapped mouths and cigarettes, watched the two struggle over Westly (“Get off!” “I won’t!”) and tumble down the hill. Cooked us up a big pot of noodles, finished the stirfry sauce, watched the British boy eat Ramen with half a scissors, the blade ducking in and out.
Girl in the shower, it’s past quiet hours. The back of my throat feels like it has been raked. I ate bread and butter for supper in my little room of light, read Balzac snuggled up in bed, eating fruit pastilles.
Wednesday and Thursday, I laughed myself to sleep. When I woke up, my bed still smelled like boy. Beautiful, colossal, broad. Trains to the city going in and out. Can hipsters love? This is Sunday sulking, eyes glued to the screen- this cute weirdo (oh, Julia Nunes, give me your heart!) strumming a ukulele, and I’m paging through pictures of kittens in cups.
The weekend: Raining all the way to Poughkeepsie. BoyAdriel was belligerent, shouting on the shuttle until Bruiser’s palm smacked across his face. Dancing in strange small rooms full of dark, lips, glowing lights and beats. Holding hands, Douce stealing packs, and I can’t light anything in all this wind. Hickeys and number 50 in my black book. Came back to the crackhouse with chapped mouths and cigarettes, watched the two struggle over Westly (“Get off!” “I won’t!”) and tumble down the hill. Cooked us up a big pot of noodles, finished the stirfry sauce, watched the British boy eat Ramen with half a scissors, the blade ducking in and out.
Girl in the shower, it’s past quiet hours. The back of my throat feels like it has been raked. I ate bread and butter for supper in my little room of light, read Balzac snuggled up in bed, eating fruit pastilles.
Souvenirs? More Than If I Had Lived a Thousand Years!
February 24 2009.
I want to write a prose poem for Paris! In the last week, I’ve read them all over. But I’ve missed the last few trips- trivially, always. Last time I made it to that sunshine city, of fresh baguettes and bowls of chocolat chaud, was years ago now- we fell out of that plane onto gravel. It was the month of heat stroke, circles (thousands!) of boroughs around the city died off in nursing homes, private vegetable gardens, underneath parched apple trees. It was all on television; I watched a hundred people run over each other- every corner store was raided as they panic-bought fans and bottled water. My brothers slumped around the hotel room, opened the shutters as wide as their arms reached. My mother folded accordion fans out of newspaper, we sweated and bruised, and the room was rich velvet, deep scarlet, carpeted to the ceilings. Our bathroom was all mirrors, and I filled up the tub with ice cubes and did not leave it. This is not a poem and it does not do Paris justice.
I want to drink water from vases and wine from boxes, I want Owen plucking les moules out with emptied shells, I want fries soaked in vinegar, salade tomate, foie gras, confit de canard. I desire cream and butter in everything. Vines seeping out of old hotel windows, women in scarves, boys who look like Bard, but do not speak our slang.
Trying to leave the squeamish behind. Learning the anatomy of a cow, edibility-wise. Want to learn to debone a duck, flay open a fish, make piles of pork shoulders on the counter. Or I’d never make it at Le Cordon Bleu.
But this is what I’m missing- for the love of light! The power of naps, but mine are now all daymares. Wake drenched in confusion and sweat, drowning in sheets and my duvet, and what is my head doing this end of the bed? I thought I was diagonal, triangular. The boy with skinny wrists, says, what are your DEEPEST dreams? Multi-layered memories. Assuming déjà -vus. This week is weird, I am disconnected. I am swamped in the fantastic. There is something uncanny in selling my soul- I should have known!
This is Orangette’s story, but like Robert’s, I want it for my own:
“In the summer of 2002, his last summer, the harvest was especially impressive, almost overwhelming. I'd slow-roast pan after pan of tomatoes, halved and salted and brushed with olive oil. That fall, when he was sick and bed-ridden, he told me dazedly of a dream he'd had in which we'd grown 10,000 beautiful tomatoes in the backyard. Ten thousand, he said. I loved being able to tell him that it wasn't a dream; he'd actually done it.”
I would add: I dreamed I lived! And: Well, You did! And I do… I miss being alone and starving in the summer, what a strange thought. I miss pulling fat tomatoes from their vines, my mouth watering as I drizzled vinegar and olive oil…and sometimes I think the best thing in the world (!) is fresh tomatoes on Italian bread buttered with Kerry-Gold, and sprinkled with sea salt.
As the recipe recites, “each of the three elements, the bread itself, the rosemary, and the potatoes, have a natural affinity with olive oil.” How perfect.
Question yourself. What would you eat if you could only eat one thing? (I would eat bread and butter. Or dumplings, perhaps, until I became round and happy. Fingers always full of flour, plump elbows leaning on dough, a big glass bottle as a rolling pin. Bamboo baskets or boiling pots of stock, ginger, spring onions, and egg yolk.)Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000? (I think so.) Malcolm ate a handful of hot peppers once at a Chinese restaurant. The walls were light blue and the waiters kept bringing him plates of sliced cucumbers.
Below: New Years breakfast. I tugged on the sleeves of Liza’s dress as the sun rose, and she swatted me away until light streamed through the window onto her little mattress.
A hummingbird’s heart beats 1,000 times a minute. Trying to remember that book where he reached into a hole in a chest and took hold of a man’s beating heart. Or maybe I dreamed it. Or maybe it was me- I reached in and took hold of his beating heart.
Or maybe it was my own.
I want to write a prose poem for Paris! In the last week, I’ve read them all over. But I’ve missed the last few trips- trivially, always. Last time I made it to that sunshine city, of fresh baguettes and bowls of chocolat chaud, was years ago now- we fell out of that plane onto gravel. It was the month of heat stroke, circles (thousands!) of boroughs around the city died off in nursing homes, private vegetable gardens, underneath parched apple trees. It was all on television; I watched a hundred people run over each other- every corner store was raided as they panic-bought fans and bottled water. My brothers slumped around the hotel room, opened the shutters as wide as their arms reached. My mother folded accordion fans out of newspaper, we sweated and bruised, and the room was rich velvet, deep scarlet, carpeted to the ceilings. Our bathroom was all mirrors, and I filled up the tub with ice cubes and did not leave it. This is not a poem and it does not do Paris justice.
I want to drink water from vases and wine from boxes, I want Owen plucking les moules out with emptied shells, I want fries soaked in vinegar, salade tomate, foie gras, confit de canard. I desire cream and butter in everything. Vines seeping out of old hotel windows, women in scarves, boys who look like Bard, but do not speak our slang.
Trying to leave the squeamish behind. Learning the anatomy of a cow, edibility-wise. Want to learn to debone a duck, flay open a fish, make piles of pork shoulders on the counter. Or I’d never make it at Le Cordon Bleu.
But this is what I’m missing- for the love of light! The power of naps, but mine are now all daymares. Wake drenched in confusion and sweat, drowning in sheets and my duvet, and what is my head doing this end of the bed? I thought I was diagonal, triangular. The boy with skinny wrists, says, what are your DEEPEST dreams? Multi-layered memories. Assuming déjà -vus. This week is weird, I am disconnected. I am swamped in the fantastic. There is something uncanny in selling my soul- I should have known!
This is Orangette’s story, but like Robert’s, I want it for my own:
“In the summer of 2002, his last summer, the harvest was especially impressive, almost overwhelming. I'd slow-roast pan after pan of tomatoes, halved and salted and brushed with olive oil. That fall, when he was sick and bed-ridden, he told me dazedly of a dream he'd had in which we'd grown 10,000 beautiful tomatoes in the backyard. Ten thousand, he said. I loved being able to tell him that it wasn't a dream; he'd actually done it.”
I would add: I dreamed I lived! And: Well, You did! And I do… I miss being alone and starving in the summer, what a strange thought. I miss pulling fat tomatoes from their vines, my mouth watering as I drizzled vinegar and olive oil…and sometimes I think the best thing in the world (!) is fresh tomatoes on Italian bread buttered with Kerry-Gold, and sprinkled with sea salt.
As the recipe recites, “each of the three elements, the bread itself, the rosemary, and the potatoes, have a natural affinity with olive oil.” How perfect.
Question yourself. What would you eat if you could only eat one thing? (I would eat bread and butter. Or dumplings, perhaps, until I became round and happy. Fingers always full of flour, plump elbows leaning on dough, a big glass bottle as a rolling pin. Bamboo baskets or boiling pots of stock, ginger, spring onions, and egg yolk.)Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000? (I think so.) Malcolm ate a handful of hot peppers once at a Chinese restaurant. The walls were light blue and the waiters kept bringing him plates of sliced cucumbers.
Below: New Years breakfast. I tugged on the sleeves of Liza’s dress as the sun rose, and she swatted me away until light streamed through the window onto her little mattress.
A hummingbird’s heart beats 1,000 times a minute. Trying to remember that book where he reached into a hole in a chest and took hold of a man’s beating heart. Or maybe I dreamed it. Or maybe it was me- I reached in and took hold of his beating heart. Or maybe it was my own.
Lemons & Honey
February 22 2009.
Psychosomatic illnesses piling up in my hands. I am looking for my heart and I can barely breathe. Miserable, pressed the flower between two stacks and left it to dry. You meant so much more than I could say. Planning escape routes, contemplating the space between my window and the concrete below.
Read the whole script for Eve Ensler’s other production. Found some lines on assault and emotional ends to means and thought a string of sad yeses. Yes yes yes yes yes. Oh. Fear of intimacy (mustn’t over analyze). Nosebleeds and headaches and a tearing underneath my sternum so I’m calling the doctor from a field of snow saying I’m bleeding, there is so much blood here. Geminis get lost easily, they are fascinated with emotions, and the boy sitting next to me is peeling an orange and –oh!- slicing it through just so with his front teeth. I can smell the juice. How terrible is this, am I. The snow in the field moved and my room was full of slanted rainbows from the window where the sun rained in. Raspberries so strong I could almost taste them, reeling, eyes back, and surrounded by hallucinated bicycles. Liza says, should I be worried. Bitter Boy helps, digs in, pulls me up by my fingertips, Ben says to him, you give good advice, I’m surprised. How was my weekend? How was my week? How was your week? I know, I know, I know. How is anything, ever. Drowning in childhood. Cough syrup and bottles and bottles and bottles of little, white pills. Wallowing. Listening to sad people sing: an opera singer is weeping in the shower below my bedroom.
What was done? Took a shower, did loads of laundry way into the AM. Made piles of taxes, the expected tears, slurped noodles, got lost a little, half-heartedly got out of bed. Smoked handfuls of cigarettes. Stopped eating. Ran around campus holding Bruiser’s hands, did we dance? I think we did. Forgot things that happened, climbed through windows in and out of buildings, sucked hard on red heart lollipops. And kissed a beautiful girl named for victory, with fragile eyelashes and smooth skin- and an umbilical cord leading to a camera flash.
Interviewer: What do you want from life? You told me before that you want to find a woman.
Diego Luna: Definitely! I want to be in love and eat as much as I can!
My heart can’t take the strain. Found Orangette, fell head over heels, stole these beautiful pictures to make me cry. Looked through bouquets of sunflowers, thought of them bending over in the August dusk, and wanted to buy a hundred seed packets, sow their children over the Hudson valley fields.
Buchner: We do not have too much pain, we have too little. Because through pain, we arrive at God. We are death, dust, ashes. How should we complain?
Psychosomatic illnesses piling up in my hands. I am looking for my heart and I can barely breathe. Miserable, pressed the flower between two stacks and left it to dry. You meant so much more than I could say. Planning escape routes, contemplating the space between my window and the concrete below.
Read the whole script for Eve Ensler’s other production. Found some lines on assault and emotional ends to means and thought a string of sad yeses. Yes yes yes yes yes. Oh. Fear of intimacy (mustn’t over analyze). Nosebleeds and headaches and a tearing underneath my sternum so I’m calling the doctor from a field of snow saying I’m bleeding, there is so much blood here. Geminis get lost easily, they are fascinated with emotions, and the boy sitting next to me is peeling an orange and –oh!- slicing it through just so with his front teeth. I can smell the juice. How terrible is this, am I. The snow in the field moved and my room was full of slanted rainbows from the window where the sun rained in. Raspberries so strong I could almost taste them, reeling, eyes back, and surrounded by hallucinated bicycles. Liza says, should I be worried. Bitter Boy helps, digs in, pulls me up by my fingertips, Ben says to him, you give good advice, I’m surprised. How was my weekend? How was my week? How was your week? I know, I know, I know. How is anything, ever. Drowning in childhood. Cough syrup and bottles and bottles and bottles of little, white pills. Wallowing. Listening to sad people sing: an opera singer is weeping in the shower below my bedroom.
What was done? Took a shower, did loads of laundry way into the AM. Made piles of taxes, the expected tears, slurped noodles, got lost a little, half-heartedly got out of bed. Smoked handfuls of cigarettes. Stopped eating. Ran around campus holding Bruiser’s hands, did we dance? I think we did. Forgot things that happened, climbed through windows in and out of buildings, sucked hard on red heart lollipops. And kissed a beautiful girl named for victory, with fragile eyelashes and smooth skin- and an umbilical cord leading to a camera flash.
Interviewer: What do you want from life? You told me before that you want to find a woman.
Diego Luna: Definitely! I want to be in love and eat as much as I can!
My heart can’t take the strain. Found Orangette, fell head over heels, stole these beautiful pictures to make me cry. Looked through bouquets of sunflowers, thought of them bending over in the August dusk, and wanted to buy a hundred seed packets, sow their children over the Hudson valley fields. Buchner: We do not have too much pain, we have too little. Because through pain, we arrive at God. We are death, dust, ashes. How should we complain?
You Can Tell By Her Smile She's a Love Child
February 10 2009.
The first step of Drunken Isphahan-Inspired Cupcakes: In a bowl, mix raspberry wine, rose syrup and dried rose petals. Add a handful of lychees. Soak.
If we lived again, I’d be a plum tree, and you’d be wine. Jivey and loose, you were born to a jazzy tie with spats. Let’s tear up the floor with our heels. You can’t have me without jealousy. A girl had painted her lips silver and bared her breasts in the night air, the nipples swollen and purple as grapes. He was a shape in the garden, full of blood and hormones. Smile. Show some teeth. Cooling boiled clementines in the snow. We are equivalent fractions. I should stay unreal forever. He says when you love someone all your saved-up wishes start coming out.
- It’s just like that with some things- can’t tell your parents, no matter how close you are.
- But I just feel like by not telling them, I miss sharing so much with them. Cute crushes, teasing at the dinner table.
- Yeah, well…illegal things are such a big part of me. Like I scoured Mexico City for those switchblades-I wish I could tell them about it.
- …Not quite the same.
What are the six things you can’t live without? She says, “Whiskey sours, wild blue, wine, baileys, vodka, love.” She swims nude and snaps up baby swordfish out of the water, comes up, nostrils flaring and the fins flapping against her jawbone. In the old world, her name was Scar.
“I remember when I first arrived in London from Budapest and saw these little queens show off their goose-bump skin and they smiled their big smiles, and screamed and jumped around like crazy beans. I remember thinking, NOW I’m in a city.”
They gave me five years to believe it was over. It took me six more to pay for my many adventures. This movie, enclosed in tight spaces and coloured in deep red seems to take place in the veins and arteries of a long, painful dream. This is a picture of Kate Moss without a shirt on, this is a picture of Kate Moss with a shirt on. Reading livefastdresspretty. One thing one must learn is how to confront people that at that particular moment, one cannot bear to meet.
“I don’t drink coffee,” he says. “Oh”, says Liza, surprised. “You look like you would”, I say. “Why”, he says, “because I’m all skinny and jittery?” He skittered like a bird over snow.
Get a job, catch the sun. I’m going crazy and this lady’s singing, bottle caps bottle caps bottle caps. The guy with the green tie says, “How was your fire drill?” Blue tie smirks, “Oh it was great. We were all holding hands, singing kumbayah.” I’m at this little desk, looking at the open box of paperclips and thinking, how many could I fit in my mouth? All the exotic girls with neck tattoos below the Dunkin’ Donuts sign on my break, chattering like Spanish birds. One has a busted lip, and a red ribbon in her hair. I tried to write “city” and wrote “children cry.” I am supposed to file taxes, but the news says, nonchalantly, as of 01/14/09, one thousand Palestinians have died fighting. Took a nap in the bathroom- is this indicative of a problem? There was a bruise the size of an apple on my upper right arm, and when I tripped and fell into hard concrete by the station, the nearby crackheads kept crowing, “Lady, lady, lady, lady fell, lady,” and a stranger in a tweed coat asked if he could help me onto the train, where I sat, my hands and knees bleeding heavily into rolls of rough papertowel. A beautiful fragile girl saying, “He doesn’t love me.” “What? But…” “Well I had sex with him anyway.”
- “How is a criminal made?” I asked the boy with glass eyes.
-“Through daring heartbreak and the unmedicated lust to feel things.”
-“Oh shit.”
-“Yea, you’re in for it. Better run.”
New Years Resolution: No More Heartbreak. I’ve already failed, again and again and again. Liza makes fun of me for crying about the skinned pears, and I want to pick up all those broken children. I sit beside a genius at dinner, all woolen tie and shiny black boots, and feel the fall into his black hole. I can hold your skinny body against mine, or be fucked against the dark cold glass of a third-story window, but I want to hold his hand and touch his hair. Boxes of shiny band-aids and bowls of home-made icecream. Desperately want to spoonfeed and spoon. A tongue against the collarbones. The soft insides of knees and elbows and iliac crests that I can hold. When we finished that picnic in the summer, we gave that bag-lady all those oily paper bags of pasta salad and all my little tea sandwiches, and she opened suspiciously them on the sidewalk in the rain, and smiled and cried. Do you know what this is, he said as we were leaving. This is involuntary empathy.
The Talmud says 930 kinds of death were created in the world. The most difficult is diphtheria, the easiest is a kiss. The kiss is what is called the mise binishike, which is how you kill the 6 people over whom the Angel of Death has no sway- such a person dies by the mouth of God.
“Anyone ever told you you’re a sweet little kid? Honestly, when you first keeked round that door, I wanted to cry and tell you all about my wicked life. And I bet you take a lot of chaps that way?”
No, collective agreement: vixen, tease, heartbreaker. Fox licking up the last of them. Unfurling like a cat. Putting constructions on things, “You are a most dangerous girl. Don’t look at me like that, I’ll fall.” I feel incredibly kissed. I am delirious with lips. Feline in a last life? He asks, eyes the stacks of canned fish. Licking out the last of the tuna, seeing Catherina of Sienna’s head in that glass jar.
Everything became threatened. The pack of the medication packet tells me to avoid alcohol and caffeine, spices and oil. Ingest with milk, it suggests. What? The helplessness of humans. All these hallways smell like beer, and there are bloody footprints in the bathroom. Over the weekend, a fire alarm was pulled and they all stumbled out, drunk and naked, into the snow. Was it you who talked about the whiskey syringe? I killed a spider with my bare hands.
Liza says, “I think I was counting D’s buttons. And he was helping me. But he wasn’t drunk. I was like, I have one button. He was like, I have…he counted them, and then said the number. And then I counted them. And was like, you have *number* more than me.”
I want to give you a raw onion and I want to see you bite into it straight. That would be enough. I would love you. You are crazy because I like you, and I like you because you are crazy.
-What was wrong with her?
- She was insane.
- And in love.
- Insane and in love, the worst combination.
Spent three hours talking a friend down from a roof. I’ll make you lyonnaise potatoes, I said. He shrugged and climbed back inside the window. Chop an onion finely, fry it brown in a tablespoon of butter. Add another tablespoon to the iron spider while frying, until the butter spits and spackles. Slice six entire boiled potatoes, knife into the palm, thickly. Spread them and fry on both sides, tossing to prevent black crackling. Sprinkle sea salt or parsley and bring them to the table very hot.
The first step of Drunken Isphahan-Inspired Cupcakes: In a bowl, mix raspberry wine, rose syrup and dried rose petals. Add a handful of lychees. Soak.
If we lived again, I’d be a plum tree, and you’d be wine. Jivey and loose, you were born to a jazzy tie with spats. Let’s tear up the floor with our heels. You can’t have me without jealousy. A girl had painted her lips silver and bared her breasts in the night air, the nipples swollen and purple as grapes. He was a shape in the garden, full of blood and hormones. Smile. Show some teeth. Cooling boiled clementines in the snow. We are equivalent fractions. I should stay unreal forever. He says when you love someone all your saved-up wishes start coming out.
- It’s just like that with some things- can’t tell your parents, no matter how close you are.
- But I just feel like by not telling them, I miss sharing so much with them. Cute crushes, teasing at the dinner table.
- Yeah, well…illegal things are such a big part of me. Like I scoured Mexico City for those switchblades-I wish I could tell them about it.
- …Not quite the same.
What are the six things you can’t live without? She says, “Whiskey sours, wild blue, wine, baileys, vodka, love.” She swims nude and snaps up baby swordfish out of the water, comes up, nostrils flaring and the fins flapping against her jawbone. In the old world, her name was Scar.
“I remember when I first arrived in London from Budapest and saw these little queens show off their goose-bump skin and they smiled their big smiles, and screamed and jumped around like crazy beans. I remember thinking, NOW I’m in a city.”
They gave me five years to believe it was over. It took me six more to pay for my many adventures. This movie, enclosed in tight spaces and coloured in deep red seems to take place in the veins and arteries of a long, painful dream. This is a picture of Kate Moss without a shirt on, this is a picture of Kate Moss with a shirt on. Reading livefastdresspretty. One thing one must learn is how to confront people that at that particular moment, one cannot bear to meet.
“I don’t drink coffee,” he says. “Oh”, says Liza, surprised. “You look like you would”, I say. “Why”, he says, “because I’m all skinny and jittery?” He skittered like a bird over snow.
Get a job, catch the sun. I’m going crazy and this lady’s singing, bottle caps bottle caps bottle caps. The guy with the green tie says, “How was your fire drill?” Blue tie smirks, “Oh it was great. We were all holding hands, singing kumbayah.” I’m at this little desk, looking at the open box of paperclips and thinking, how many could I fit in my mouth? All the exotic girls with neck tattoos below the Dunkin’ Donuts sign on my break, chattering like Spanish birds. One has a busted lip, and a red ribbon in her hair. I tried to write “city” and wrote “children cry.” I am supposed to file taxes, but the news says, nonchalantly, as of 01/14/09, one thousand Palestinians have died fighting. Took a nap in the bathroom- is this indicative of a problem? There was a bruise the size of an apple on my upper right arm, and when I tripped and fell into hard concrete by the station, the nearby crackheads kept crowing, “Lady, lady, lady, lady fell, lady,” and a stranger in a tweed coat asked if he could help me onto the train, where I sat, my hands and knees bleeding heavily into rolls of rough papertowel. A beautiful fragile girl saying, “He doesn’t love me.” “What? But…” “Well I had sex with him anyway.”
- “How is a criminal made?” I asked the boy with glass eyes.
-“Through daring heartbreak and the unmedicated lust to feel things.”
-“Oh shit.”
-“Yea, you’re in for it. Better run.”
New Years Resolution: No More Heartbreak. I’ve already failed, again and again and again. Liza makes fun of me for crying about the skinned pears, and I want to pick up all those broken children. I sit beside a genius at dinner, all woolen tie and shiny black boots, and feel the fall into his black hole. I can hold your skinny body against mine, or be fucked against the dark cold glass of a third-story window, but I want to hold his hand and touch his hair. Boxes of shiny band-aids and bowls of home-made icecream. Desperately want to spoonfeed and spoon. A tongue against the collarbones. The soft insides of knees and elbows and iliac crests that I can hold. When we finished that picnic in the summer, we gave that bag-lady all those oily paper bags of pasta salad and all my little tea sandwiches, and she opened suspiciously them on the sidewalk in the rain, and smiled and cried. Do you know what this is, he said as we were leaving. This is involuntary empathy.
The Talmud says 930 kinds of death were created in the world. The most difficult is diphtheria, the easiest is a kiss. The kiss is what is called the mise binishike, which is how you kill the 6 people over whom the Angel of Death has no sway- such a person dies by the mouth of God.
“Anyone ever told you you’re a sweet little kid? Honestly, when you first keeked round that door, I wanted to cry and tell you all about my wicked life. And I bet you take a lot of chaps that way?”
No, collective agreement: vixen, tease, heartbreaker. Fox licking up the last of them. Unfurling like a cat. Putting constructions on things, “You are a most dangerous girl. Don’t look at me like that, I’ll fall.” I feel incredibly kissed. I am delirious with lips. Feline in a last life? He asks, eyes the stacks of canned fish. Licking out the last of the tuna, seeing Catherina of Sienna’s head in that glass jar.
Everything became threatened. The pack of the medication packet tells me to avoid alcohol and caffeine, spices and oil. Ingest with milk, it suggests. What? The helplessness of humans. All these hallways smell like beer, and there are bloody footprints in the bathroom. Over the weekend, a fire alarm was pulled and they all stumbled out, drunk and naked, into the snow. Was it you who talked about the whiskey syringe? I killed a spider with my bare hands.
Liza says, “I think I was counting D’s buttons. And he was helping me. But he wasn’t drunk. I was like, I have one button. He was like, I have…he counted them, and then said the number. And then I counted them. And was like, you have *number* more than me.”
I want to give you a raw onion and I want to see you bite into it straight. That would be enough. I would love you. You are crazy because I like you, and I like you because you are crazy.
-What was wrong with her?
- She was insane.
- And in love.
- Insane and in love, the worst combination.
Spent three hours talking a friend down from a roof. I’ll make you lyonnaise potatoes, I said. He shrugged and climbed back inside the window. Chop an onion finely, fry it brown in a tablespoon of butter. Add another tablespoon to the iron spider while frying, until the butter spits and spackles. Slice six entire boiled potatoes, knife into the palm, thickly. Spread them and fry on both sides, tossing to prevent black crackling. Sprinkle sea salt or parsley and bring them to the table very hot.
Loving in a Dark House
January 11 2009.
To watch, when bundled up back at school, with a mug of hot tea and a sliver of dark chocolate: Requiem for a Dream.
Boogie Nights.
Trainspotting.
Panic in Needle Park.
The last nights before we went home, I couldn’t sleep alone, so I found Science of Sleep and played it on repeat until I could see it on the insides of my eyelids.
Morgan brought me to an organic food shop and showed me a boy who gave me a bag of corn kernels that I put in my coat pocket and rolled between my fingers. In the back, I found large plastic containers of rices and couscous and lentils and plunged in their plastic scoops, wishing it were my hands instead.
The sink sounds like it is pouring itself a glass of water.
To watch, when bundled up back at school, with a mug of hot tea and a sliver of dark chocolate: Requiem for a Dream.
Boogie Nights.
Trainspotting.
Panic in Needle Park.
The last nights before we went home, I couldn’t sleep alone, so I found Science of Sleep and played it on repeat until I could see it on the insides of my eyelids.
Morgan brought me to an organic food shop and showed me a boy who gave me a bag of corn kernels that I put in my coat pocket and rolled between my fingers. In the back, I found large plastic containers of rices and couscous and lentils and plunged in their plastic scoops, wishing it were my hands instead.
The sink sounds like it is pouring itself a glass of water.
Things I Have Forgotten
November 2 2008.
Dream and movie-like, really. Covered in blue latex and glitter, being buffed with milk from all sides, Liza a fairy with fists of glitter, then tottering in space heels. Hannah painted everything Liza was awkward about, took pictures as Kevin strutted naked. Gavino and a mime visited, happy from Sangria. The pizza delivery guy came in, following the rap from Hannah’s 90’s mix, stood stock still and stared. Nude, I knelt and covered Liza in ink. Adriel said, come into the light, walk this way slowly- STOP- keep going, eat this slice of pizza, do that with your teeth. Adriel said, Kevin and you together, Adriel said make-out, he said lean in and more tongue (ew).
Smog was full of people feeling my skin. Fire-breathing and tunnels to crawl though, and I drunk-dialed that hometown cutie and she told me she’d been walking through fields. Liza bummed cigarettes from a boy who spent the last year in New Zealand flying airshows, and at the end of the night, he walked me half of the way home.
Pretty sure I removed my eye makeup with Clorox wipes (I KNOW). Found a raised bruise underneath my hair, and when he pulled the latex off, he said, oh, you’re bleeding. Liza and her invented shortcuts wrought with danger and cement. I turned the bathtub blue. A potleaf in the inside of my left knee in indelible ink. And if he hadn’t left his book of addresses here, I would have believed I made him up.
Saturday I spent in bed (of course) until Ben took me and Liza out for Chinese and teas. We sat in Starbucks and died with laughter. Someone wrote ‘blue goddess’ on my doorboard, which is nice. Also, ‘crazy love stories and experiences’ under my dorm activity ideas title- cute. Liza teased me out of an early bedtime with promises and sighs, and we saw a smog show with strings. The boy came again, then, borrowed a car and drove into my legs, lights on brights. He said, well I like you, you’re quite the anomaly. Whisked me to the black swan after closing hours and introduced me to free things and a sad bartender. Met a marine who used to be a hippie dealer, and brushed up against a girl in a blue tutu.
I was supposed to write an unconventional love story today. Instead, I woke to kisses up my back, and didn’t find a way to leave the bed. When he'd gone, I broke open soft kiwis and lounged.
Dream and movie-like, really. Covered in blue latex and glitter, being buffed with milk from all sides, Liza a fairy with fists of glitter, then tottering in space heels. Hannah painted everything Liza was awkward about, took pictures as Kevin strutted naked. Gavino and a mime visited, happy from Sangria. The pizza delivery guy came in, following the rap from Hannah’s 90’s mix, stood stock still and stared. Nude, I knelt and covered Liza in ink. Adriel said, come into the light, walk this way slowly- STOP- keep going, eat this slice of pizza, do that with your teeth. Adriel said, Kevin and you together, Adriel said make-out, he said lean in and more tongue (ew).
Smog was full of people feeling my skin. Fire-breathing and tunnels to crawl though, and I drunk-dialed that hometown cutie and she told me she’d been walking through fields. Liza bummed cigarettes from a boy who spent the last year in New Zealand flying airshows, and at the end of the night, he walked me half of the way home.
Pretty sure I removed my eye makeup with Clorox wipes (I KNOW). Found a raised bruise underneath my hair, and when he pulled the latex off, he said, oh, you’re bleeding. Liza and her invented shortcuts wrought with danger and cement. I turned the bathtub blue. A potleaf in the inside of my left knee in indelible ink. And if he hadn’t left his book of addresses here, I would have believed I made him up.
Saturday I spent in bed (of course) until Ben took me and Liza out for Chinese and teas. We sat in Starbucks and died with laughter. Someone wrote ‘blue goddess’ on my doorboard, which is nice. Also, ‘crazy love stories and experiences’ under my dorm activity ideas title- cute. Liza teased me out of an early bedtime with promises and sighs, and we saw a smog show with strings. The boy came again, then, borrowed a car and drove into my legs, lights on brights. He said, well I like you, you’re quite the anomaly. Whisked me to the black swan after closing hours and introduced me to free things and a sad bartender. Met a marine who used to be a hippie dealer, and brushed up against a girl in a blue tutu.
I was supposed to write an unconventional love story today. Instead, I woke to kisses up my back, and didn’t find a way to leave the bed. When he'd gone, I broke open soft kiwis and lounged.
What I Did Last Night Instead of Sleeping
October 29 2008. 
Another self-portrait that doesn’t look like me! I like it, still. 12 hours bending over. Went to bed at 8 o’clock, covered in glue, ink, charcoal, gouache, craypas, pastel, chalk, with graphite pencil smudges all over my hands and elbows. I slept for 15 minutes and got up and went to class.
Also, made some Bard Postsecret cards, listened to too much Blink-182, and talked to an adorable girlcutie from my hometown about summering in Croatia and flutes vs. pennywhistles.
Also, made some Bard Postsecret cards, listened to too much Blink-182, and talked to an adorable girlcutie from my hometown about summering in Croatia and flutes vs. pennywhistles.
And This Time is No Exception
October 27 2009.
I always fall hardest for girls who are crazy and creepy.
These girls who flood my voicemail with drunkdials, beg me to use them, force me to say I love her (or her) (or her) long before I do. They say they want to feel my heartbeat, want to get stranded at a subway in the early hours, want twin-shaved heads, dancing with her head on my shoulder, a slender neck in the side of a photograph, pleather and leather and knots around ankles- they want us drowning, making cuts in ourselves, want the stars and the sun and to pull out a soul. They lie to me, and they usually make me cry. They quote things I've said before I knew them.
Liza tells me I shouldn't actually appreciate stalkers, but I know an echo of me. And Danny says, is she shorter than you? This is important in case you fuse.
I always fall hardest for girls who are crazy and creepy.
These girls who flood my voicemail with drunkdials, beg me to use them, force me to say I love her (or her) (or her) long before I do. They say they want to feel my heartbeat, want to get stranded at a subway in the early hours, want twin-shaved heads, dancing with her head on my shoulder, a slender neck in the side of a photograph, pleather and leather and knots around ankles- they want us drowning, making cuts in ourselves, want the stars and the sun and to pull out a soul. They lie to me, and they usually make me cry. They quote things I've said before I knew them.
Liza tells me I shouldn't actually appreciate stalkers, but I know an echo of me. And Danny says, is she shorter than you? This is important in case you fuse.
Pop Princesses
October 21 2008.
I think a girl in my writing class has the cutest shy smile. And I’m still wishing I could find and talk to that wonderfully tall girl, glasses, dresses only in black, so skinny in jeans. We were in Kline together last week. She smiled at me from across the salad bar, and I swooned. But I am tired of the gay politics here, so that’s as far as it goes, I think.
Spent the last several days pseudo-flirting with girlcuties who don’t live near here. That crimson-haired cutie from a year ago reappears, says she wants to be my bird, asks me if I’m flutter-free. One miss kitten tells me she likes bruises and bubblegum, she quotes a poem that I wrote in highschool and says she wants to feel my lips with her fingers. That skirt who used to send me unsigned letters emails me, saying, let’s kiss and tell. I’ll make you cheesecake. She still knows all my old softspots, how to make me cringe, how to warm me up- how funny. Some others, scattered around, plaid shirts and pigtails, dyed hair, pixies that run the rail from nailbiters to bioqueens, who urge me to come home, they’ll buy me coffee and cigarettes (neither of which I desire, but it's a nice thought) anyway, she says she'll make me scarves to keep me warm in winter.
You are all too young, or too sweet, (or too unavailable, anyway)- all cupcake hands and dimples, emo-adorable, making eyes and hiding smiles. All of you wear too much eye-shadow, (but who am I to talk?) and you all tell me too much- I remember some of you from way back when, when did you get so forward? you all want the world, while I’d just like someone to make squash soup with me, to hold hands with once the weather turns cold.
Fall break was all full of wonderful. Button brought me to a party at a house far from home, in the middle of fields and horses, with a big firepit out back and lots of beautiful Qs sitting on logs and trying to sing kumbayah without knowing the words or the chords. Dogs that were tall until my shoulders, all lean muscle and stretching necks. Something about a pimp and too much peach schnapps, jokers and fools, and I was sitting on a couch between a grrl and a boi. The next day we climbed into a car: the two hippiegirls curled into each other with their tins of tobacco, the two in the front holding hands, and me on her lap, squeezed in, and Douce in front laughing, saying, “This car is obviously going to Outfest!” Hannah was somewhere there earlier, snapping subversive pictures, but we missed her because we couldn’t find shoes for the train. The gayborhood was full of confetti and smiling girls and boys shyly holding hands and swapping kisses for pictures. We looked at rainbows, were plastered with stickers and signs, buttons and swatches; a tall boy in a bowtie gave me a global cooling flashlight, and the Britney dragshow was entertaining, but the Rent performers stole the show. I bought a four dollar lemonade that was really just water, and couple kissed for cameras in front of the protestors.
On the way back, I met a boy on the train platform with a tall rainbow hat- a longlost friend- he hugged me before he recognized me. I met another lovely girl, with dark hair and dark eyes, and she came to dinner with us and ordered lots of drinks, gushed about her girlfriend, hugged us goodbye. We told jokes in the car on the way home. When I got in, everyone was asleep except for Owen, who had waited up for me, he wanted to trade stories, and he wanted me to play him music for sleeping.
And Morgan came to stay this past weekend, and it was lovely. We went to the Coming Out party Saturday night. Liza and I wore glitter, something I haven’t done in ages, which is strange maybe, but makes sense for me this year. Adriel was crazy, scaring freshmen girls and being generally a mess to music. Fun, all the same. A girl smiled at me across a room, and came to put a glowing bangle on my wrist for the dark dance floor. M and I met Kevin in his long fur coat, and were upstairs a little before going home. The next day, we ate bagels and juicy red apples and chai lattes with Liza, and then it was warm enough to sit in the sun outside Bluecher. We went with Hannah and Rachel to Moo Cow, got us some dairy, and laughed on the picnic benches about poppets and projects. Danny brought us into Leonard later on; his room is full of cute, and the basement has the Blushing Player’s cardboard fort. A good reunion, I think. This morning, I sent her off real early with a tall bottle of chai, mixed dried berries, and some baklava, wishing, perhaps under my mother’s influence, that I had more little snacks in my possession.
Because this little page has proven not to be as anonymous as I thought, I have installed a sitemeter, and am almost appalled at the number and variety of people who read this. Who are you all? Who do I know in the city? North Dakota? Tennessee? I can make some educated guesses, but not many. Don’t take me seriously, regardless.
Sweet Hearts
October 9 2008.
Some things:
1. Glass jars. They fill two rows of my fridge, filled with chilled water, juice, tea. Reminds me of glass bottles and our milkman who had a little white trolley full of clinking crates, and those peel-off lids, silver and blue that some birds knew to peck through while everything waited on the doorstep. If you put a special order in, you could get fresh orange juice too, newly pressed, and full of pulp. Mum would get yogurt, in lots of little cups, and sliced them full of strawberries. And when we went away, we had to remember to leave a note in a white envelope outside for him, otherwise when we returned, it was a mistake. I remember pulling up to the house in the midst of autumn, and leaves crackling underfoot, the doorstep and those leading down to the ground crammed with glass bottles of full milk and half-milk and half-newspapers now lost to the winds.
2. When we first moved to America, I used to go to sleep hoping I’d wake up in the morning, and it would all be a dream, I would wake up an all-American happy, well-adjusted child with an all-American accent and interests, and lots of friends who’d never make fun of the way I said things, and the things I liked, because I would be just like them. I would like peanut butter, I wouldn’t crave crumpets or sausages or blood pudding, I would eat sugary coloured cereals in the morning instead of prunes and Weetabix. I would be able to swim, I would have read all the nancy drew books already. I would unlearn script. When we went back to England in 8th grade, I bought dandelion cordial by the gallon in tall greenglass bottles and drank them fully, sitting in the shade of the kitchen window, watching the clothes line sway and the neighbor’s black cat prowl around the hedge. That was the same summer and the same trip back that I accidentally filled our swap-house with gasoline fumes and was playing with that lighter that would set that world ablaze.
3. I bought Button a book a couple years ago called Giraffes? Giraffes! I forget about it most of the time, but I wholly recommend it still. A good follow-up to a heartbreaking work, and it isn’t what you think.
4. I found that poem I referenced in my first blog entry, the one about how I would spend all the time in the world. The last stanza(ish), this important one, is this:
It's almost noon you say?
Wait for a while, then slip downstairs
And bring us up some chilled white wine,
And some blue cheese, and crackers, and some fine
Ruddy-skinned pears.
5. On the lake this summer, at the Waterfront, I created a scavenger hunt for the kids who didn’t want to canoe or fish, or needed a break from the terrible, terrifying line of children tumbling and stretching and whipping back their hooked lines and rods into the ground, tree branches behind them, and any hair or skin that moved in the way of their wrath. One of the bonus questions was: how many man-made things can you see? And one group counted 89. What has happened to nature?
6. I’ve been listening to Velvet Underground the last few nights I’ve been nocturnal, making lists and cleaning and class-reading and poster-making. This album reminds me of the summer. Lying sideways in sunshine, tip-of-the-nose sunburns, Irish tea with milk and sugar, even though Megan had to take it specially out of the high shelf in the kitchen cabinet every time. Basil plants on the patio. It feels like we did this two (three?) summers in a row, but that’s not true at all. It is so easy to forget that scorching uneasiness, sitting sweating at that snack counter, turning hotdogs and mixing greasy chicken salads. My shirts stuck to my back and my shorts got shorter with time. I played chef with the pretzel oven, making mini pizzas with stolen cheese and fresh rolls handmade and donated by the basement baker. That sounds cute, but all of it was terrible. There was a radio, and there was a fan, but they were both gone by July. There were whispers of mutiny, and when I left, I had to sign papers saying I would take no one with me.
7. I came home with Hannah, talking and laughing. We stopped for 89 cents-ers, and wore matching blindpeople sunglasses, black and enormous. Hugh has made me laugh for the last several hours- I had forgotten, as usual, how funny my family is…Mum looked kind of skeptically at me when I said I have no money, and asked about my blue skinny jeans, the new chucks, the black shirt I stole. Why is my hair purple in those places? What is that-red? Chestnuts behind my ears? And did those use to be holes? But she says I’m shining- says I look so healthy. My mother is not an American mother, she does not coddle or lie to make me feel good. She is a battleaxe mother and she is my hero.
8. First, I want some Nike low dunks. So badly.
Second, who do I know in Kansas? No one, I think. Don’t you have anything better to do?
Some things:
1. Glass jars. They fill two rows of my fridge, filled with chilled water, juice, tea. Reminds me of glass bottles and our milkman who had a little white trolley full of clinking crates, and those peel-off lids, silver and blue that some birds knew to peck through while everything waited on the doorstep. If you put a special order in, you could get fresh orange juice too, newly pressed, and full of pulp. Mum would get yogurt, in lots of little cups, and sliced them full of strawberries. And when we went away, we had to remember to leave a note in a white envelope outside for him, otherwise when we returned, it was a mistake. I remember pulling up to the house in the midst of autumn, and leaves crackling underfoot, the doorstep and those leading down to the ground crammed with glass bottles of full milk and half-milk and half-newspapers now lost to the winds.
2. When we first moved to America, I used to go to sleep hoping I’d wake up in the morning, and it would all be a dream, I would wake up an all-American happy, well-adjusted child with an all-American accent and interests, and lots of friends who’d never make fun of the way I said things, and the things I liked, because I would be just like them. I would like peanut butter, I wouldn’t crave crumpets or sausages or blood pudding, I would eat sugary coloured cereals in the morning instead of prunes and Weetabix. I would be able to swim, I would have read all the nancy drew books already. I would unlearn script. When we went back to England in 8th grade, I bought dandelion cordial by the gallon in tall greenglass bottles and drank them fully, sitting in the shade of the kitchen window, watching the clothes line sway and the neighbor’s black cat prowl around the hedge. That was the same summer and the same trip back that I accidentally filled our swap-house with gasoline fumes and was playing with that lighter that would set that world ablaze.
3. I bought Button a book a couple years ago called Giraffes? Giraffes! I forget about it most of the time, but I wholly recommend it still. A good follow-up to a heartbreaking work, and it isn’t what you think.
4. I found that poem I referenced in my first blog entry, the one about how I would spend all the time in the world. The last stanza(ish), this important one, is this:
It's almost noon you say?
Wait for a while, then slip downstairs
And bring us up some chilled white wine,
And some blue cheese, and crackers, and some fine
Ruddy-skinned pears.
5. On the lake this summer, at the Waterfront, I created a scavenger hunt for the kids who didn’t want to canoe or fish, or needed a break from the terrible, terrifying line of children tumbling and stretching and whipping back their hooked lines and rods into the ground, tree branches behind them, and any hair or skin that moved in the way of their wrath. One of the bonus questions was: how many man-made things can you see? And one group counted 89. What has happened to nature?
6. I’ve been listening to Velvet Underground the last few nights I’ve been nocturnal, making lists and cleaning and class-reading and poster-making. This album reminds me of the summer. Lying sideways in sunshine, tip-of-the-nose sunburns, Irish tea with milk and sugar, even though Megan had to take it specially out of the high shelf in the kitchen cabinet every time. Basil plants on the patio. It feels like we did this two (three?) summers in a row, but that’s not true at all. It is so easy to forget that scorching uneasiness, sitting sweating at that snack counter, turning hotdogs and mixing greasy chicken salads. My shirts stuck to my back and my shorts got shorter with time. I played chef with the pretzel oven, making mini pizzas with stolen cheese and fresh rolls handmade and donated by the basement baker. That sounds cute, but all of it was terrible. There was a radio, and there was a fan, but they were both gone by July. There were whispers of mutiny, and when I left, I had to sign papers saying I would take no one with me.
7. I came home with Hannah, talking and laughing. We stopped for 89 cents-ers, and wore matching blindpeople sunglasses, black and enormous. Hugh has made me laugh for the last several hours- I had forgotten, as usual, how funny my family is…Mum looked kind of skeptically at me when I said I have no money, and asked about my blue skinny jeans, the new chucks, the black shirt I stole. Why is my hair purple in those places? What is that-red? Chestnuts behind my ears? And did those use to be holes? But she says I’m shining- says I look so healthy. My mother is not an American mother, she does not coddle or lie to make me feel good. She is a battleaxe mother and she is my hero.
8. First, I want some Nike low dunks. So badly.
Second, who do I know in Kansas? No one, I think. Don’t you have anything better to do?
We Will Not Trade Money for Poison
October 8 2008.
The Speakeasy is now meeting in the Root Cellar. Tonight, we meddled around in the little kitchen making black chai and peach teas, spilling hot water on the floor, scavenging for mugs (where do they keep them?). Found a distiller of what looked like cider behind an unlocked door, read through some anarchist manifestos, and maneuvered around the dentist chair in the bathroom that reminds me of the penitentiary back home.
Last week, we planned a revitalization of the old-time jazz and literature and love. Swing-dancing and saxophones. Poetry readings in dim light in a basement, clutching worn pages in print, circles and lots of chairs. Lounging, red bow lipstick, purple grapes in bunches. Some joking about using money for flasks and pipes. Our names engraved. Held warm mugs and wrote from the prompts ‘something wrapped’ and ‘bury me standing: explain’.
One no-show sent us back an email to the announce, saying, “Name the time and place, I’ll bring the whiskey.” Another said, “Tell me the secret bootlegged speakeasy position.” Bard has funny people, sometimes I love them. Over break, I’m making posters of mink stoles, pouring coffee cups, delicately-fingered hands, finger-waved hair. We will plaster them over the school.
In other news: Kevin, I have ordered the latex, we can’t turn back now.
The Speakeasy is now meeting in the Root Cellar. Tonight, we meddled around in the little kitchen making black chai and peach teas, spilling hot water on the floor, scavenging for mugs (where do they keep them?). Found a distiller of what looked like cider behind an unlocked door, read through some anarchist manifestos, and maneuvered around the dentist chair in the bathroom that reminds me of the penitentiary back home.
Last week, we planned a revitalization of the old-time jazz and literature and love. Swing-dancing and saxophones. Poetry readings in dim light in a basement, clutching worn pages in print, circles and lots of chairs. Lounging, red bow lipstick, purple grapes in bunches. Some joking about using money for flasks and pipes. Our names engraved. Held warm mugs and wrote from the prompts ‘something wrapped’ and ‘bury me standing: explain’.
One no-show sent us back an email to the announce, saying, “Name the time and place, I’ll bring the whiskey.” Another said, “Tell me the secret bootlegged speakeasy position.” Bard has funny people, sometimes I love them. Over break, I’m making posters of mink stoles, pouring coffee cups, delicately-fingered hands, finger-waved hair. We will plaster them over the school.
In other news: Kevin, I have ordered the latex, we can’t turn back now.
Citrus & Water
October 6 2008.
A good weekend, mostly. One simple night of work and letters, and Liza coming over all crazy, lying on my bed and giggling while I showed her silly movie clips. Friday was faster, we put on our peacoats and headed to a courtyard, where I bit my nails and watched Liza climb up a million miles of steel in her patent leather heels. We danced a little, but there were pauses between songs, and it was Clemens’ birthday, and he gave us some wine, and told me I would find someone, that I’m beautiful. We escaped to the crackhouse after, and made turkey sandwiches full of mustard, finally had Liza try that limeade (the one that tastes like love and slushies and delicious!) in big black mugs, and talked about how boring it is not to like anyone, and wrote down quotes that aren’t, and then curled up and went to sleep. Liza slept Saturday away, and I sipped emergen-c from that large brandy bottle and did some work, and read the WSJ in the sun outside, it was just warm enough- lovely! Then, the gym and I ate lots of green things in cups, and some pieces of cheese, and filled my body up with water and sunlight. That evening, we wandered to the photoshow, which was full of people on drugs and too much of things, Kevvy and M. were there, sucking on citrus, decked out like circus performers and prostitutes. Liza and I were clear-headed, the photography was stark and intricate and fascinating- I wanted to take some of them home. And although I know it was purposeful, I’m sorry I missed you, I almost went home after the show, wandering and hopeful. I do bury things.
But I stayed, and we made Annie’s later on, in a pan that barely boiled, in the Manor kitchen while hundreds of drunken, lost kids wandered in and out from the danceparty- one boy stripped off his shirt and ran screaming out behind the tall building, into the darkness, while I told another girl to keep drinking water, get a cup instead, keep drinking water.
The driving course today was only four hours, so I was able to make lists and read things and send emails, before gym with Liza where we saw Gavino (happily!) and then cooked a small pizza in a frying pan. I rescued my plates and found some fabulous foodie sites, and things are nice.
All the same, I’m up in the middle of the night coughing again, sleepily grasping around for my inhaler, which is never where it should be. One of these days, I will be calling my doctor in the morning.
A good weekend, mostly. One simple night of work and letters, and Liza coming over all crazy, lying on my bed and giggling while I showed her silly movie clips. Friday was faster, we put on our peacoats and headed to a courtyard, where I bit my nails and watched Liza climb up a million miles of steel in her patent leather heels. We danced a little, but there were pauses between songs, and it was Clemens’ birthday, and he gave us some wine, and told me I would find someone, that I’m beautiful. We escaped to the crackhouse after, and made turkey sandwiches full of mustard, finally had Liza try that limeade (the one that tastes like love and slushies and delicious!) in big black mugs, and talked about how boring it is not to like anyone, and wrote down quotes that aren’t, and then curled up and went to sleep. Liza slept Saturday away, and I sipped emergen-c from that large brandy bottle and did some work, and read the WSJ in the sun outside, it was just warm enough- lovely! Then, the gym and I ate lots of green things in cups, and some pieces of cheese, and filled my body up with water and sunlight. That evening, we wandered to the photoshow, which was full of people on drugs and too much of things, Kevvy and M. were there, sucking on citrus, decked out like circus performers and prostitutes. Liza and I were clear-headed, the photography was stark and intricate and fascinating- I wanted to take some of them home. And although I know it was purposeful, I’m sorry I missed you, I almost went home after the show, wandering and hopeful. I do bury things.
But I stayed, and we made Annie’s later on, in a pan that barely boiled, in the Manor kitchen while hundreds of drunken, lost kids wandered in and out from the danceparty- one boy stripped off his shirt and ran screaming out behind the tall building, into the darkness, while I told another girl to keep drinking water, get a cup instead, keep drinking water.
The driving course today was only four hours, so I was able to make lists and read things and send emails, before gym with Liza where we saw Gavino (happily!) and then cooked a small pizza in a frying pan. I rescued my plates and found some fabulous foodie sites, and things are nice.
All the same, I’m up in the middle of the night coughing again, sleepily grasping around for my inhaler, which is never where it should be. One of these days, I will be calling my doctor in the morning.
If You Want to Know More About Me, Believe Rumors
October 2 2009.
This crash course in exercise, a tease, reminds me of the beginning of Outward Bound. I’d refused to go running beforehand, I’d taken only a few short powerwalks, and my heart and lungs almost exploded the first day on the water-8 hours kayaking in salt water. And the next day, and the next day, and I didn’t cry until the 5th day, the day I had a nervous breakdown on the sand- my hair had already turned to coarse rope, my hands were bleeding all over, I was purple with sunburn. A few days into the second week, I was alright. Things were still terrible, and I still woke up at night in panics, and there were the armies of crabs the colour of sand, and those racist homophobe boys (who were also so gentlemanly and taught me how to paddle and all the different kinds of seabirds and their prey), but I could take the work, and I could paddle without breaking my neck, and I could even jump right up and drag that fucker across the rocks when we hit shallow water.
I think it was Kristal, mainly, who taught me how to not take shit from people. On the way home, I stood in the airport without crossing my arms, and when my grandparents took me out to dinner, I embarrassed them by crowing over all the electric lights in the salad bar. I swear I ate a tomato that glowed. My grandmother ordered seafood something, and all I could think of was the way fish were just silver and shadows under water. The last day of OB, I took the coldest shower of my life in a roughly-assembled wooden stall with a hose up the side and over the top. It was about 5AM; I was first in line because due to a hypothermia scare, I hadn’t had one the night before. 24 hours later, I had a shower at my grandmother’s house. I made the water very hot; I hadn’t washed my hair in two weeks. But everything was white and tiled and sterile and I couldn’t see out of the window from the tub.
I was still in love, then, too. But she didn’t want to hear about the boy we had to pull out of quicksand, and the lightning drills in the middle of the night, and the boy’s skin peeling right off, and Kristal piercing her hands in a million places-almost to the bone-when she pushed off that coral reef, and that girl being helicoptered out, off the island. And maybe it was better that way- if you can make a fairytale, at least it’s good for a time.
On A Much Different Note:
This past Sunday, Ben and Liza and I went out. I managed to stay away from kitchen utensil aisles, even though I love them so much, because we needed to be places, and I can waste hours touching and holding and trying different ladles, potato mashers, garlic crushers, feeling the weight of carving knives in the creases of my palm. I bought high neon pink pumps that reminded me of Morgan.
Kevvy and I are going to full-body wax and there will be a day project, outside if it’s warm, or in a bathroom, with a collection of cool kids covering us in latex body paint. It will be blue. And Halloween. And BoyAdriel with his camera.
And Currently:
I’ve been writing lil queries to all my cool cats about fall break, to see if they’ll be around to rock it. Messaging people who’re out of this bubble has made me realize that school has made me talk so weird. Why?
It’s to the extent now that when I get home, strangers ask me where I’m from. Sometimes I make up answers.
After the gym tonight, Liza helped me take those bars out. There was a lot of pain involved, some blood, and some boy I don’t know asking if he could use his fingers to help, if he could stand and watch while my eyes rolled back a little. Oh, voyeurs. A girl, too, filling up her kettle at the sink saying, “Oh, can I see? What does it—OH. Ohhh. Oh.”
I wish I weren’t so intense. I think some things would be easier.
This crash course in exercise, a tease, reminds me of the beginning of Outward Bound. I’d refused to go running beforehand, I’d taken only a few short powerwalks, and my heart and lungs almost exploded the first day on the water-8 hours kayaking in salt water. And the next day, and the next day, and I didn’t cry until the 5th day, the day I had a nervous breakdown on the sand- my hair had already turned to coarse rope, my hands were bleeding all over, I was purple with sunburn. A few days into the second week, I was alright. Things were still terrible, and I still woke up at night in panics, and there were the armies of crabs the colour of sand, and those racist homophobe boys (who were also so gentlemanly and taught me how to paddle and all the different kinds of seabirds and their prey), but I could take the work, and I could paddle without breaking my neck, and I could even jump right up and drag that fucker across the rocks when we hit shallow water.
I think it was Kristal, mainly, who taught me how to not take shit from people. On the way home, I stood in the airport without crossing my arms, and when my grandparents took me out to dinner, I embarrassed them by crowing over all the electric lights in the salad bar. I swear I ate a tomato that glowed. My grandmother ordered seafood something, and all I could think of was the way fish were just silver and shadows under water. The last day of OB, I took the coldest shower of my life in a roughly-assembled wooden stall with a hose up the side and over the top. It was about 5AM; I was first in line because due to a hypothermia scare, I hadn’t had one the night before. 24 hours later, I had a shower at my grandmother’s house. I made the water very hot; I hadn’t washed my hair in two weeks. But everything was white and tiled and sterile and I couldn’t see out of the window from the tub.
I was still in love, then, too. But she didn’t want to hear about the boy we had to pull out of quicksand, and the lightning drills in the middle of the night, and the boy’s skin peeling right off, and Kristal piercing her hands in a million places-almost to the bone-when she pushed off that coral reef, and that girl being helicoptered out, off the island. And maybe it was better that way- if you can make a fairytale, at least it’s good for a time.
On A Much Different Note:
This past Sunday, Ben and Liza and I went out. I managed to stay away from kitchen utensil aisles, even though I love them so much, because we needed to be places, and I can waste hours touching and holding and trying different ladles, potato mashers, garlic crushers, feeling the weight of carving knives in the creases of my palm. I bought high neon pink pumps that reminded me of Morgan.
Kevvy and I are going to full-body wax and there will be a day project, outside if it’s warm, or in a bathroom, with a collection of cool kids covering us in latex body paint. It will be blue. And Halloween. And BoyAdriel with his camera.
And Currently:
I’ve been writing lil queries to all my cool cats about fall break, to see if they’ll be around to rock it. Messaging people who’re out of this bubble has made me realize that school has made me talk so weird. Why?
It’s to the extent now that when I get home, strangers ask me where I’m from. Sometimes I make up answers.
After the gym tonight, Liza helped me take those bars out. There was a lot of pain involved, some blood, and some boy I don’t know asking if he could use his fingers to help, if he could stand and watch while my eyes rolled back a little. Oh, voyeurs. A girl, too, filling up her kettle at the sink saying, “Oh, can I see? What does it—OH. Ohhh. Oh.”
I wish I weren’t so intense. I think some things would be easier.
Adrenaline Junkie: Going Back
September 28 2008.
I have started going to the gym every day to Daft Punk. Pumping my blood that hard reminds me of roundhouse kicks, key training, hair-pulling and nail-scratching being legal, that girl pulling my head back so dangerously hard with her arm fierce around my neck until I banged back with both hands on the floor for mercy, using leg muscles to drive someone straight to the floor, a flip of the shoulder, throwing that boy over his head with a weight-reversal, running over heights and falling to ninja rolls- standing up right away and back into a run, feeling a bead of blood in my mouth, biting down too hard with the fast, inevitable smack of a fist into the side of my head, stars, blacking out in the air as legs kicked out from under me, a hand sliding carefully around my throat, feeling the sting of the mat on my calves, upper arms, back as I hit it full-force, dark bruises around my collarbone, learning quick reflexes so unnatural to me, to pull up a hand, push out that fist, that claw in contact with the bridge of a nose, use the flat of the foot for the lower half of the stomach so they crumble and fall as we all have, slowly and quickly and into a pile until they are nudged or slapped or kicked awake to get up and do it all again. (Even at this point so much later, it's all instinct to me, built in under the skin, and when those jokes about who would win in a fight with me are so casually thrown around, it's so obvious but not, which is such a strange, strange thing.)
Surrender was illegal. But I failed anyway, in the end, when I left, and moved on with all my dance classes, which left me just as breathless and were perhaps just as sadistic (all the teachers obsessed with ‘good pain’), but missed some quality I’d left behind with the master—and we would have stayed, I think, if not for all the abuse. It was too much of a fear, one wrong move- a foot too far in the front, the side kick a degree too left, the ready stance not solid enough- and the stinging cane, an open palm slap across the face, and I think the day he pulled a child up by both ears into the air until he was kicking and looking desperately out of the upper studio window, it wasn’t enough anymore that he was an Original master, a Korean refugee. And we left before the police came, hid out at the back of the building until the sirens died down, and we made out back to the lot and drove like hell.
I quit dancing for a play, one of the biggest regrets of my life. There is still a heart-twinge when I think about it, something perhaps silly five years later. And after even a couple months of rehearsal, I’d lost the elasticity and the look and the pirouettes and there was no chance I’d be able to push my way back into that world. I quit acting to be a stage manager for a drama, and I took up kickboxing to complement it, but while it was many of the same sharp powermoves, it wasn’t the same, really, and when the instructors were kicked out of that college basement because of lease issues, I felt it, but I moved on, and senior year of highschool I got lost.
When I was a younger fourteen, I wanted so badly to be a boxer. Mum said no, someone would break my nose, I wouldn't be beautiful anymore; Dad said, "Girls don't box." I wanted to feel the bones in my nose break. I wanted those black-eyes, bandaged hands and limps, badass complexion, those straining calf muscles. I would spend hours at the studio and our basement, beating the shit out of all the equipment, until the sweat ran into my eyes and stung.
I have started going to the gym every day to Daft Punk. Pumping my blood that hard reminds me of roundhouse kicks, key training, hair-pulling and nail-scratching being legal, that girl pulling my head back so dangerously hard with her arm fierce around my neck until I banged back with both hands on the floor for mercy, using leg muscles to drive someone straight to the floor, a flip of the shoulder, throwing that boy over his head with a weight-reversal, running over heights and falling to ninja rolls- standing up right away and back into a run, feeling a bead of blood in my mouth, biting down too hard with the fast, inevitable smack of a fist into the side of my head, stars, blacking out in the air as legs kicked out from under me, a hand sliding carefully around my throat, feeling the sting of the mat on my calves, upper arms, back as I hit it full-force, dark bruises around my collarbone, learning quick reflexes so unnatural to me, to pull up a hand, push out that fist, that claw in contact with the bridge of a nose, use the flat of the foot for the lower half of the stomach so they crumble and fall as we all have, slowly and quickly and into a pile until they are nudged or slapped or kicked awake to get up and do it all again. (Even at this point so much later, it's all instinct to me, built in under the skin, and when those jokes about who would win in a fight with me are so casually thrown around, it's so obvious but not, which is such a strange, strange thing.)
Surrender was illegal. But I failed anyway, in the end, when I left, and moved on with all my dance classes, which left me just as breathless and were perhaps just as sadistic (all the teachers obsessed with ‘good pain’), but missed some quality I’d left behind with the master—and we would have stayed, I think, if not for all the abuse. It was too much of a fear, one wrong move- a foot too far in the front, the side kick a degree too left, the ready stance not solid enough- and the stinging cane, an open palm slap across the face, and I think the day he pulled a child up by both ears into the air until he was kicking and looking desperately out of the upper studio window, it wasn’t enough anymore that he was an Original master, a Korean refugee. And we left before the police came, hid out at the back of the building until the sirens died down, and we made out back to the lot and drove like hell.
I quit dancing for a play, one of the biggest regrets of my life. There is still a heart-twinge when I think about it, something perhaps silly five years later. And after even a couple months of rehearsal, I’d lost the elasticity and the look and the pirouettes and there was no chance I’d be able to push my way back into that world. I quit acting to be a stage manager for a drama, and I took up kickboxing to complement it, but while it was many of the same sharp powermoves, it wasn’t the same, really, and when the instructors were kicked out of that college basement because of lease issues, I felt it, but I moved on, and senior year of highschool I got lost.
When I was a younger fourteen, I wanted so badly to be a boxer. Mum said no, someone would break my nose, I wouldn't be beautiful anymore; Dad said, "Girls don't box." I wanted to feel the bones in my nose break. I wanted those black-eyes, bandaged hands and limps, badass complexion, those straining calf muscles. I would spend hours at the studio and our basement, beating the shit out of all the equipment, until the sweat ran into my eyes and stung.
Crazy Little Katydids
September 17 2009.
Today was a wonderful one- full of sunshine and smiles. I lay on the grass and read of religious wars in 16th century Paris (ao sensual and bizarre, I’m sorry I missed it), drank a little bottle of apple juice, like old times, went to art class in the morning and drew a car that drove away, went to wars in the evening and fell in love with Tabetha all over. At night, Ben and Liza and I went for sushi, a gorgeous seaweed salad, and coming back to campus, I saw an airplane but thought it was a falling star.
And even though there’s that scattering of spider bites from lying among ferns and katydids behind the bunny ears (bunny years?) and (still) those nail marks, and that terrible sunset amoeba-bruise and the awkward sunburn (of course), it’s all okay, I’m so very happy here.
I have to take all these words and pull a story out soon. It won’t be the same under hard eyes and fingers, but it’s got to be. The future is so close, I wish I could hold it. Tonight is goosebump-cold and full of stars. I want to kiss you. But I’m okay being miles away from everything I ever knew, all that reaching to drop letters into the red postboxes, squeezing my eyes shut over bridges, falling in and out of water, that sewing scissors I never saw again after that night, all those diaries my mother read. My battleaxe and barndoor pushing me over the edge.
I wish that people will stop projecting onto me, that everyone would just understand everyone else...and, of course, that wonderful people didn’t just leave me, but there’s always been this pattern of abandonment. So I let myself dwell a little in soft and sad moments, and then move on with breaths so deep I’ll drown.
But right now I’m wishing that I can just convince her to spend one sun-drenched afternoon with me before the winds grow bitter and we’re stuck having picnics on the crackhouse kitchen floor in some far-reaching pretend… and I don’t know whether to put that in the former category, but I’ll leave it for now.
(I’m listening to Sigur Ros again; they make everything exquisite.)
And all the same, I overcome. Here I am, and was, and will be, happily reading press releases about my daddy and drinking milky coffee, and then heading to the library to make posters for a group of kids who loiter in my doorway all the time, asking me silly things about laundry and hanging things and research and how to find another guitar string and whether we can all make pancakes in the shapes of mickey mouse and dinosaurs together again in the PM, and it’s okay because although I yearn for desolate cities, I like it for now, it’s something. And until winter breaks, I’ll stay here, cooking and cleaning and thinking and collecting big, beautiful empty jars, and threading my rosary through my fingers until I can feel the echo of the Hail Marys in my ears and head and heart.
Anna and I are going to press lavender and make tea, and I may go to mass this Sunday.
FUCK WHAT YOU HEARD, THE FIELDHOUSE IS ON FIRE
September 14 2008.
M insisting, “I’m a poet, I’m a poet and I’m a fucking liar, you could drug test me right now.”
L, “Wait, you would fail.”
And M, “Therein lies the rub.”
First things first:
Much of this blog is fiction. There! I've said it.
I miss Morgan and Liz and I toting liter bottles of Cola. Even, I miss the awful flannel days, when we were all crying and lying on the ground with Pringles crushed into the rug underfoot, and when I carried entire boxes of tissues everywhere and had Cat Powers in my headphones. I miss us all wrong.
Ce beau les gens qui dorment…
At a lunch a few weeks ago, that seasonal hippie told that story: she went wild boar hunting while stoned. Everyone was in full hunting gear, tripping and laughing- and they skinned the whole thing once they caught it, and they sat on the beach still giggling, and cooked great hunks of meat over a fire they’d made from driftwood and soft seaweed. I heard about some gutterpunks too, I thought, How I Wish I could live peacefully with those crazies, (they must see life so differently!) those runaways with self-given tattoos on their necks and the soft parts under their arms and knees, those crude finger gangsigns, that broken bottle with the broken chokehold their clever fingers carefully embrace. These people use church words as curses (Tabernacle!).
This weekend, I put more purple in my hair with my fingers and I got my ear pierced two times again and the cartilage crunched under the gun, and Ben clutched at air with fists, even though he was the one who had insisted on watching. He asked if we were the ones who told him about the time machines (we weren’t) and wore an old man’s sweater people pointed out in a coffee shop and liked.
“Everyone,” he said, “has everyone else’s umbrella. The world is CHAOS.” Also, he said, “You guys lead a ridiculous lifestyle. It’s like you’re seizing everything by the throat- but then squeezing it and trying to kill it. And you’re really excited about it!” But, excuse me, while I kisssssssss the sky.
Kevin and I decided to create a Good Gay Club, where we would have posters and exclusivity and exquisite queers and nobody who’s only ever kissed one person before allowed. Likewise, Liza kisses boys who might not be what they think they are.
The cars have been speeding and full of unfortunate people drinking unfortunate things. Megan says, woah, she says, “I am a pedestrian, I have no metal parts.”
These Things Also:
Kevin called us cocktail witches. We were all falling down in short dresses.
Different stories of which parties where, gathering where you’ve swallowed up all the glitter and have diamonds embedded in the bumps under skin of your spine, we can’t remember what happened and what didn’t. Dancesafe. What are bones? Those in my hands shake and Anna and I are mountains. Kevin says, “I drew a picture of Liza. She is sitting on the bed and she is becoming birds.” Someone else says, that building is on watch. Someone else says, the last party I was at was dancing, and security was coming! Some random kid, yelling with his arms up, “We Can Take Em!!!” But was wrestled down to the ground as we all ran away.
At some point, you were a fountain of purple and stars, Kevin thought your neck was a bottle, you said, Oh! I’m so sorry; we said no no no, this is you we are spectacular together. Some time later, Kevvy ripped my dress off and I don’t remember why or what or how. those smog kids with those white balloons, so many! They were rolling hard with the visuals of glory. Ell said, “Oh! The love drug!” She said, “The hug drug, we should be in a band! We are chemical cousins!”
Your skin makes me cry. I am interested in copious amounts of everything. In E, where does the S go? I can’t know because I haven’t been there, done that. Can I say this out loud? I am responsible, I am touching things and things are being touched; there is a softness in your eyes, they are only here to be a lesser version of the hardness in my eyes. I like when they keep saying, “Come” and “Tell me what you need.” All the moves she made were so deliberate.
Stop stop stop I’m trying to kiss my best friend. I would just like to say, as I’ve said before, that I cannot wait until I can grow up and get into the real world, just so I can name a boat after you. It will sail in the wind so those sails billow. Speaking of sails, we walked to visit the village and those boys who live there, and Kevin was eaten by a large blue fish sitting on the floor. It moved like a whale when he was moving inside it. It billowed, he billowed.
Speaking of chocolate, Kevin said he believes in the appeal of intergenerational cannibalism- he carries his grandfather in a saltshaker. Anna was a blur last night, she jumped up and she fell down, we all fell down from heights. Before you got on the bus to ford the river Styx, you said it is nice here, but a scary, scary void. You said, you and Liza, you are the lost souls, I escape.
And this:
She knew what she was doing, so most of us were wrong about her. Especially as she and that other dyke checked you out strolling by her cigarettes.
They played Hustler last night, I couldn’t believe it. And that girl I want so bad grinding up on someone else, and I wasn’t in the right state of mind anyway, and I thought…fuck. And that’s it.
It sounds like Keen is flooding. For dinner tonight, I had three glasses of juice. This pleases me. They were tall glasses and the juice glowed red like jewels.
We have been defeated by the weekend. I have fallen back in love with words, this is why I made this thing. It is completely irrelevant whether or not it is read, I do not want to lose this lines.
What? I am a poet, THIS IS ALL LIES.
M insisting, “I’m a poet, I’m a poet and I’m a fucking liar, you could drug test me right now.”
L, “Wait, you would fail.”
And M, “Therein lies the rub.”
First things first:
Much of this blog is fiction. There! I've said it.
I miss Morgan and Liz and I toting liter bottles of Cola. Even, I miss the awful flannel days, when we were all crying and lying on the ground with Pringles crushed into the rug underfoot, and when I carried entire boxes of tissues everywhere and had Cat Powers in my headphones. I miss us all wrong.
Ce beau les gens qui dorment…
At a lunch a few weeks ago, that seasonal hippie told that story: she went wild boar hunting while stoned. Everyone was in full hunting gear, tripping and laughing- and they skinned the whole thing once they caught it, and they sat on the beach still giggling, and cooked great hunks of meat over a fire they’d made from driftwood and soft seaweed. I heard about some gutterpunks too, I thought, How I Wish I could live peacefully with those crazies, (they must see life so differently!) those runaways with self-given tattoos on their necks and the soft parts under their arms and knees, those crude finger gangsigns, that broken bottle with the broken chokehold their clever fingers carefully embrace. These people use church words as curses (Tabernacle!).
This weekend, I put more purple in my hair with my fingers and I got my ear pierced two times again and the cartilage crunched under the gun, and Ben clutched at air with fists, even though he was the one who had insisted on watching. He asked if we were the ones who told him about the time machines (we weren’t) and wore an old man’s sweater people pointed out in a coffee shop and liked.
“Everyone,” he said, “has everyone else’s umbrella. The world is CHAOS.” Also, he said, “You guys lead a ridiculous lifestyle. It’s like you’re seizing everything by the throat- but then squeezing it and trying to kill it. And you’re really excited about it!” But, excuse me, while I kisssssssss the sky.
Kevin and I decided to create a Good Gay Club, where we would have posters and exclusivity and exquisite queers and nobody who’s only ever kissed one person before allowed. Likewise, Liza kisses boys who might not be what they think they are.
The cars have been speeding and full of unfortunate people drinking unfortunate things. Megan says, woah, she says, “I am a pedestrian, I have no metal parts.”
These Things Also:
Kevin called us cocktail witches. We were all falling down in short dresses.
Different stories of which parties where, gathering where you’ve swallowed up all the glitter and have diamonds embedded in the bumps under skin of your spine, we can’t remember what happened and what didn’t. Dancesafe. What are bones? Those in my hands shake and Anna and I are mountains. Kevin says, “I drew a picture of Liza. She is sitting on the bed and she is becoming birds.” Someone else says, that building is on watch. Someone else says, the last party I was at was dancing, and security was coming! Some random kid, yelling with his arms up, “We Can Take Em!!!” But was wrestled down to the ground as we all ran away.
At some point, you were a fountain of purple and stars, Kevin thought your neck was a bottle, you said, Oh! I’m so sorry; we said no no no, this is you we are spectacular together. Some time later, Kevvy ripped my dress off and I don’t remember why or what or how. those smog kids with those white balloons, so many! They were rolling hard with the visuals of glory. Ell said, “Oh! The love drug!” She said, “The hug drug, we should be in a band! We are chemical cousins!”
Your skin makes me cry. I am interested in copious amounts of everything. In E, where does the S go? I can’t know because I haven’t been there, done that. Can I say this out loud? I am responsible, I am touching things and things are being touched; there is a softness in your eyes, they are only here to be a lesser version of the hardness in my eyes. I like when they keep saying, “Come” and “Tell me what you need.” All the moves she made were so deliberate.
Stop stop stop I’m trying to kiss my best friend. I would just like to say, as I’ve said before, that I cannot wait until I can grow up and get into the real world, just so I can name a boat after you. It will sail in the wind so those sails billow. Speaking of sails, we walked to visit the village and those boys who live there, and Kevin was eaten by a large blue fish sitting on the floor. It moved like a whale when he was moving inside it. It billowed, he billowed.
Speaking of chocolate, Kevin said he believes in the appeal of intergenerational cannibalism- he carries his grandfather in a saltshaker. Anna was a blur last night, she jumped up and she fell down, we all fell down from heights. Before you got on the bus to ford the river Styx, you said it is nice here, but a scary, scary void. You said, you and Liza, you are the lost souls, I escape.
And this:
She knew what she was doing, so most of us were wrong about her. Especially as she and that other dyke checked you out strolling by her cigarettes.
They played Hustler last night, I couldn’t believe it. And that girl I want so bad grinding up on someone else, and I wasn’t in the right state of mind anyway, and I thought…fuck. And that’s it.
It sounds like Keen is flooding. For dinner tonight, I had three glasses of juice. This pleases me. They were tall glasses and the juice glowed red like jewels.
We have been defeated by the weekend. I have fallen back in love with words, this is why I made this thing. It is completely irrelevant whether or not it is read, I do not want to lose this lines.
What? I am a poet, THIS IS ALL LIES.
Champagne Synesthesia
September 5 2008.
Yes, I am actually sitting here at my desk in my fastfood-printed underwear, listening to t.A.T.u., opening that can of French vanilla coffee mix with my teeth. spent this entire day naked in bed, air conditioning on my back, curled into green and blue blankets. My room is a disaster, I need caution tape. I moved all the furniture on a two-hour whim, and then never followed through with the rest of my shit.
I told everyone at the party last night that I was in love with Christmas lights. I told everyone I was in love with lights, I said I liked a girl, I liked two girls, I said Happy Birthday three times. Morgan texted me earlier to say she’d made a bento box lunch, which made me so unbelievably happy and wistful and everything all together.
When we left, strolling along streets, I realized I’d left my handbag. Kevin sprinted back into the party to get it, and returned almost naked, draped in a long, redvelvet curtain that trailed the ground behind him. All the weirdness of the night was exquisite. It was up there with the foamparty, where we ended up swaying in front of overlit photographs at the art opening, and everyone realized together- my arms were covered in someone else’s blood.
And I woke up with a boy and we both couldn’t remember how we got home.
I’m pretty sure I told you something inappropriately awful in someone else’s kitchen last night. I only remember you awkwardly holding the neck of that glass bottle and looking with open, sad eyes, and I forgot everything and I’m sorry.
My fingers smell like nicotine. I love those three syllables, they roll sharply off my tongue. I bought a box of junior mints yesterday, and ate them all at once: they were comforting for some many reasons and so many memories.
The French boy with the crazy name, who will be famous one day, just came to my room and asked me for a quarter. I had to put on clothes to answer the door, something I will be too lazy to do in future, and he said,
Oh, your room is so well-decorated, it’s like you’ve been here for years, this is your home, oh, look! What are your passions, what drives you? What is your passion?
And left before I could respond.
Yes, I am actually sitting here at my desk in my fastfood-printed underwear, listening to t.A.T.u., opening that can of French vanilla coffee mix with my teeth. spent this entire day naked in bed, air conditioning on my back, curled into green and blue blankets. My room is a disaster, I need caution tape. I moved all the furniture on a two-hour whim, and then never followed through with the rest of my shit.
I told everyone at the party last night that I was in love with Christmas lights. I told everyone I was in love with lights, I said I liked a girl, I liked two girls, I said Happy Birthday three times. Morgan texted me earlier to say she’d made a bento box lunch, which made me so unbelievably happy and wistful and everything all together.
When we left, strolling along streets, I realized I’d left my handbag. Kevin sprinted back into the party to get it, and returned almost naked, draped in a long, redvelvet curtain that trailed the ground behind him. All the weirdness of the night was exquisite. It was up there with the foamparty, where we ended up swaying in front of overlit photographs at the art opening, and everyone realized together- my arms were covered in someone else’s blood.
And I woke up with a boy and we both couldn’t remember how we got home.
I’m pretty sure I told you something inappropriately awful in someone else’s kitchen last night. I only remember you awkwardly holding the neck of that glass bottle and looking with open, sad eyes, and I forgot everything and I’m sorry.
My fingers smell like nicotine. I love those three syllables, they roll sharply off my tongue. I bought a box of junior mints yesterday, and ate them all at once: they were comforting for some many reasons and so many memories.
The French boy with the crazy name, who will be famous one day, just came to my room and asked me for a quarter. I had to put on clothes to answer the door, something I will be too lazy to do in future, and he said,
Oh, your room is so well-decorated, it’s like you’ve been here for years, this is your home, oh, look! What are your passions, what drives you? What is your passion?
And left before I could respond.
Hoppipolla
September 3 2008.
Anna says, "DUDE. Let’s be crackheads! Our lives would be so fun. Wait…no, they wouldn’t."
The second week of January in Philadelphia was full of cold. On that Sunday, my favorite addict was kicked out of our safe haven shelter for refusing to take a shower because it reminded him of prison. I spent the next few days looking out for him on the usual side-streets, the cardboard piles over gutters, but no one had seen him, a terrible sign. The Wednesday before that Sunday, I spent four long hours in the hospital holding up another man, John, who, full of opiates and Xanax, kept passing out and falling out of the waiting room chair. His hand was broken in six places and he had arrived at the haven that morning without three teeth and the left side of his face smashed in, murmuring about conspiracies. Near the end of summer, I was turning out of the train station on my way to Chinatown with a couple friends, when a man approached us with an empty coffee cup. “Can you spare a quarter? Lost my train ticket.” I looked up, under the man’s hat, and he recognized me.
“Claire! How you doing, babygirl? Gonna visit us sometime soon?”
I’ve had a lot of people ask me something like: But isn’t there something awful and desperate and funny-but-sad, about sitting on the phone with Social Security for an hour, calling on behalf of the crazy homeless man next to you, who periodically extends the already painful conversation by grabbing the phone and telling the underpaid operator racist jokes?
The answer is yes. Of course. But we don't want to save the world because it's fun.
EDIT: Loneliness- That Is What We Are Selling Today.
Writing YOU FAIL AS A WRITER on post-its and hanging them about my room at home and sleepaway camp didn’t stir me to creation in the way I hoped it would.
If only I fell for girls who weren’t in the midst of mini heartbreak. Before I came back here, Nicole asked why I couldn’t find any uncomplicated girls- I think it has something to do with forgetting the future exists, and the feeling of rushing hand-in-hand towards some disaster, having your heart all caught up in laughter and anxiety and some realization but dismissal of horror. Before I came back here, Nicole took Coletta and me to a gay club in the city: it was full of sweaty young people, moving and writhing and slipping and pounding in some crazy fervor- this desperate dance.
Everyone was beautiful and everyone had something to prove.
I Thought You Were Drawing a Heartbeat
August 29 2008.
Last night, I found a letter I wrote to you, unsent and dated Friday the 13th, June 2008. In it, I talked about smooth, vanillabean icecream, how I used to be a girlscout who churned it from scratch in old coffeecans. I said I was sitting in the park, said I wished I could weave tapestries, so I could weave one for you, and put our stories in it. I said I found a girl called Sadie, who wears orange and red, and I thought I might be able to love her. But that was months later.
Robert Kelly told me a story: “Years ago, when I was living in Los Angeles, the local grocery store had a sale- lemons for a penny each. I bought a hundred.” I can’t explain my yearning here, how I want so badly and impossibly to own this story, to remember wearing those golden bangles that day at the grocery store, how they reflected off the smooth metal of the cart, filled to the top, tremendously so, with knobbled lemons. Or two carts? It is too much for my heart that I might have needed two carts. In the same way, I can’t explain how, at my kitchen job two summers ago, I broke open a freshly heated hotdog bun, and found myself crying as I held it, soft and warm, in my hands.
Anna asked me today what I thought of all those people sitting, holding string. The Polish boy with open eyes and glassy hair taught me to tie knots. His hands were quick and quiet. She wanted to talk about sunsets and killing each other for diamonds, I said, this meltdown is on overload.
I told Liza I loved her, and she said, “Lamp? What?”
Last night, I found a letter I wrote to you, unsent and dated Friday the 13th, June 2008. In it, I talked about smooth, vanillabean icecream, how I used to be a girlscout who churned it from scratch in old coffeecans. I said I was sitting in the park, said I wished I could weave tapestries, so I could weave one for you, and put our stories in it. I said I found a girl called Sadie, who wears orange and red, and I thought I might be able to love her. But that was months later.
Robert Kelly told me a story: “Years ago, when I was living in Los Angeles, the local grocery store had a sale- lemons for a penny each. I bought a hundred.” I can’t explain my yearning here, how I want so badly and impossibly to own this story, to remember wearing those golden bangles that day at the grocery store, how they reflected off the smooth metal of the cart, filled to the top, tremendously so, with knobbled lemons. Or two carts? It is too much for my heart that I might have needed two carts. In the same way, I can’t explain how, at my kitchen job two summers ago, I broke open a freshly heated hotdog bun, and found myself crying as I held it, soft and warm, in my hands.
Anna asked me today what I thought of all those people sitting, holding string. The Polish boy with open eyes and glassy hair taught me to tie knots. His hands were quick and quiet. She wanted to talk about sunsets and killing each other for diamonds, I said, this meltdown is on overload.
I told Liza I loved her, and she said, “Lamp? What?”
Bread and Water Can So Easily Be Toast and Tea
August 28 2008.
We were in the community garden at night with my shitty lighter, the pretty blue one that reeks of gasoline, and all the sunflowers stood up brave and tall, leaning over the wooden fence towards us. They had faces, black and beaded and interested, and Anna said, let’s give them high-fives, let’s high-five those flowers, they are beautiful and I want everything to be beautiful. That’s not what she said, but that’s how I remember it as I want to. Spencer said, I’ll pound them.
You rocked like a boat, you said you felt the river underneath your back like wings, you said you felt it. Sigur Ros is on again, so we can all sit and stare into each other’s eyes like we might fall in. You said, I can feel my soul rock, it is coming out, and it is coming back inside again.
Stephanie tells me I’d be the perfect candidate for a secret life: “All the costumes and secret smiles.” We can be angry all together if we’d like, but it’s better in the sunlight to be splendid all together.
It’s so easy to agree when Anna says, “Can we just like, pass the fuck out real quick?” when all she means is sleep we’ve missed while living. Anna says she wishes people could be clouds.
My knuckles turn red from pressure when I tell secrets on the phone, something I swore I’d never do. Look at the moon, it’s like a birth. Give that rip a tug.
She would visit everyone and everything, she would climb high and hold creatures and nurture trees and tame animals and pickle things in jam jars. He would rule the world someday. What would I do if I knew life was infinite? I would eat slowly and sleep more. I’d read that poem about slicing those pears and eating them in bed with a lover. I’d slice those pears, eat them, and fall back into arms and sleep.
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